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INTEODUCTOEY OBSEEVATIONS. 



In preparing this new edition of the " Night Thoughts," witli a 
memoir of the author, a critical estimate of his celebrated wiitings, 
and notes explanatory of the text, the editor has been influenced in 
no small degi-ee trj a desire to make the Poem far more useful than 
it has hitherto been without notes. It has by no means the erudite 
character of the Pai-adise Lost, and does not, on this account, stand 
in so much need of explanatory observations ; but it is not without 
its many learned and liistoiical allusions, its recondite truths, its ob- 
scurities, intricacies, and difficulties, which, to most readers, greatly 
require elucidation. 

The fact that it is extensively used in seminaries of leai-ning, as a 
text book for grammatical analysis and rhetorical criticism, has also 
recommxcnded it to the editor as a pecuharly fitting subject of his 
critical study and annotation. For this use it is, perhaps, not less 
valuable than the Paradise Lost, in expanding the intellect, gi\^ng 
scope to the imagination, exuberance to fancy, cultivation to hte- 
rary taste, and improvement to the moral feehng-s. These Poems 
are so entuely different m then- metrical structure and style of 
thought from the Paradise Lost, except in the single attribute of sub- 
limity, that a study of the one for educational purposes, or for higher 



4 INTRODUCTORY OBSERVATIOI«;. vA ^ 

ends, does by no means siipei-sede the necessity or advantage of tlie 
study of the other also. In one particulai-, it occui-s to us, that the 
" Night Thoughts" has the preference as a text book in schools : it 
abounds in figui-es of speech that are more or less faulty ; and it 
mil prove a valuable exercise to discover and point out the respects 
in whicli rhetorical propriety has been violated. In another particu- 
lar it must be of eminent service in a course of education : it fm*- 
nishes a great number of pithy sentences, easily remembered, and 
pregnant with the most important meaning, which, if lodged early 
in the mind, must exert a salutary influence in securing a wise im- 
provement of time, a proper choice of objects of pm-suit, a restraint 
upon the appetites and passions, an upward direction to the reason 
and affections, and a powerful auxiliary to the practice of the duties 
of religion. 

Besides aU this, the earnest effort to understand, and comprehend, 
and criticise a work so condensed and profound and vast in its con- 
ceptions, must powerfully serve to enlarge and invigorate aU the 
intellectual powers. 

It being the aim of the editor, in part, to embrace in his plan a 
provision for the wants of young persons, to whom the study of the 
Night Thoughts is peculiarly valuable, he has explained many 
words, foiTus of expression, and allusions, that might be perfectly 
intelhgible to othei"s without explanation. He desired also to meet 
the necessities of aU whose early advantages of education may have 
been limited or neglected, so that the Poem might be read by all 
understandingly, profitably, and thus vrith satisfaction. 

As will be perceived, he has contributed much to the intelligible- 
ness of the poem, and to an easy discovery of its gi-eat outlines of 
thought, by designating in a conspicuous manner the principal topics 
upon which it treats. Tliis feature of the plan has cost no iucon 
siderable labour. The advantage thus afforded to the reader is two 



liSTTRODUCTORT OBSERYATIOjS'S. 5 

fold. It furnishes a key to tlie several portions of the work, by 
which its treasures are laid open more readily to the mind : and it 
will be found very convenient for reference to subjects, when a per- 
son desu'es to employ but a few moments at a time in its perusal. 
The "K'ight Thoughts," not being very closely connected in its 
component parts, is particularly susceptible of such a division ; and 
what renders such a division the more convenient indeed, and need- 
ful, is that the thoughts are so weighty, so crowded often into a very 
limited space, that it is not easy, without fatigue, nor perhaps desi- 
rable, to read mo}'e than one or two hundi'ed lines at a single 
perusal. 

To readers of all classes it seems a desidcn-atum to offer such 
an edition of this admhable poem as shall be attractive, and adapted 
to bring its wonderful conceptions iiito close contact with the mind 
and heart ; and that for these, among other reasons, — if read even 
occasionally, with due attention, and in the use of the explanatory 
notes, it Avill habituate the mind to just thoughts of death, that 
gi-and issue to which all are hastening ; and of eternity, the interests 
of which it most concerns all of us to provide for at an early day. 
It ^ill impressively remind us of what we are all too apt to be for- 
getful and negligent, that 

" This is the bud of being, the dim dawn, 
The twilight of our day, the vestibule. 
Life's theatre as yet is shut, and death, 
Strong death, alone can heave the massy bar, 
This gross impediment of clay remove, 
And make us, embryos of existence, free." 

It will convince us most effectually, our judgments at least, of the 
vanity of this world and of its pursuits, when compared with the 
claims of the world to come : that 

"All, all on earth is shadow, all beyond 



b INTRODUCTORY OBSERVATIONS. 

Is substance ; the reverse is Folly's creed. 
How solid all when change shall he no more :" 

It will thus guard us against improper and undue excitement 
fi'om worldly objects and pursuits : it will also furnish alleviations 
of the severity of earthly sorrows and disappointments. 

It wiU admonish us of the too common vice of every age — an 
unprofitable, if not universal, waste of time, the value of which is 
nowhere so eloquently portrayed as in this volume. 

" Each night we die, 
Each morn are born anew ; each day a life ! 
And shall we kill each day ? If trifling kills, 
Sure vice must butcher. what heaps of slain 
Cry out for vengeance on us ! Time destroyed 
Is suicide, where more than blood is spilt. 

* =* "^ * Moments seize ; 
Heaven's on their wing : a moment we may wish, 
When worlds want wealth to buy," 

Again ; this poem is a well-filled magazine of offensive arms 
against scepticism, and of defensive arms for the security of the 
great Christian scheme of redemption. The sixth and seventh 
Nights are appropriated to this service. In the preface to the poem 
th3 author remarks : " The dispute about rehgion may be reduced, 
I think, to this single question ; Is man immortal, or is he not ? If 
he is not, all our disputes are mere amusements, or trials of skill : 
but if man is immortal, it will behoove him to be very serious about 
eternal consequences, or, in other words, to be truly rehgious. And 
this sreat fundamental truth, unestablished or unawakened in tho 
minds of men, is, I conceive, the real source and support of all our 
infidelity ; how remote soever the particular objections advanced 
may seem to be from it." 

As a fair specimen of the grandeur and impressiveness, and useful 



INTRODUCTORY OBSERVATIONS. 7 

tendencies of this portion of the work, take the following, selected 
with no special care : — 

" Know'st thou the importance of a soul immortal ? 
Behold this midnight glory : worlds on worlds ! 
Amazing pomp ! Redouble this amaze : 
Ten thousand add ; and twice ten thousand more : 
Then weigh the whole. One soul outweighs them all; 
And calls the astonishing magnificence 
Of unintelligent creation poor. 
For this, believe not me : no man believe ; 
Trust not in words, but deeds ; and deeds no less 
Than those of the Supreme ; nor his, a few : 
Consult them all : consulted, all proclaim 
Thy soul's importance." 

Another gi'eat advantage of the frequent perusal of the poem will 
be found in its eloquent inculcation of those gi'eat Christian doc- 
trines which he at the foundation of pure morals and sound religion. 
Faith in those doctrines may be acquired, or greatly strengthened 
by a famihar intercourse with the sublime communings of the 
" Night-watcher." His address to the triune Godhead, in the last 
night, is wonderfully subhme and impressive. To the Son he says : 

" O thou Patron-God ! 
Thou God and mortal ! thence more God to man ! 
Man's theme eternal ! man's eternal theme ! 
Thou can'st not 'scape uninjured from our praise. 
Uninjured from our praise can He escape. 
Who, disembosom'd from the Father, bows 
The heaven of heavens, to kiss the distant earth ! 
Breathes out in agonies a sinless soul ! 
Against the Cross Death's iron sceptre breaks ! 
From famished Ruin plucks her human prey ! 
.Throws wide the gates celestial to his foes !'' 



8 INTRODUCTORY OBSERVATIONS. 

We have spoken of the " Night Thoughts" as a pecuharly valua- 
ble study for young persons. We should be gTiilty of a gross 
offence against the poem, to omit to add that the general strain of 
its meditations is such as to seize hold upon the sympathies, and to 
be adapted to the wants of those vrho are beginning to feel the in&- 
mities of age ; and there are but few poems, if any, so well suited 
to give their thoughts a profitable direction toward those grave real- 
ities, to the borders of which time is carrying them forward. K 
there is any class of persons 4o whom the high themes connected 
with death and immortahty should be welcome, it must be they 
whose advanced yeai-s admonish them that the scenes of earth can 
be enjoyed but a short time longer. A nd how touchingiy does the 
author describe the case of such ! 

" my coevals ! remnants of yourselves ! 
Poor human ruins tottering o'er the grave ! 
Shall we, shall aged men, like aged trees. 
Strike deeper their vile root, and closer cling. 
Still more enamored of this wretched soil ? 
Shall our pale, withered hands be still stretched out, 
Trembling, at once, with eagerness and age ? 
With avarice, and convulsions, grasping hand? 
Man wants but little, nor that little long." 

It is not then a useless labor to prepare this echtion of the " Night 
Thoughts," for the use of those who are on or within the precincts 
of old age ; since, in reading, as the j)oet in writing it, their experi- 
ence may accord mth his : 

" I chase the moments with a serious song, 
Song soothes our pain ; and age has pains to soothe." 

We have spoken of the importance of the use of this poem in the 
education of the youthful mind, on account of the weighty senti- 



INTRODUCTORY OBSERVATIONS. 9 

ments briefly expressed, and the practical maxims of gi-eat value 
scattered thi'ough its pages. As an illustration of this remark the 
following may be offered. 

" Oh Time ! than gold more sacred. 
Part with it as with money, sparing : pay 
No moment but in purchase of its worth. 
And what its worth, ask death- beds; they can tell." 

" Tis greatly wise to talk with qgr past hours 
And ask them what report they bore to heav'n." 

" Earth's highest station ends in ' Here he Hes ;' 
And 'Dust to dust,' concludes her noblest song." 

"The grand morality is love of Thee." 

'•A Christian is the highest style of man." 

" Believe, and show the reason of a man ; 
Believe, and taste the pleasure of a god ; 
Believe, and look with triumph on the tomb." 

"That life is long which answers life's great end: 
The time that bears no fruit deserves no name. 
The man of wisdom is the man of years." 

" And all may do what has by man been done. 
The more our spirits are enlarged on earth, 
The deeper draught shall they receive of heaven." 

It has been objected to this poem that it often indulges in a strain 
too gloomy ; an objection which is fully presented and considered 
m the following " Estimate of the Writing's of the Author," and there- 
fore it may now be sufficient just to enter our dissent from the ob- 
jections, and to adduce in the author's vindication a few of the beau- 
tiful and triumphant lines with which he bring-s his poem to a close ; 



10 INTRODUCTORY OBSERVATIOXS. 

showing, that whatever effect it may have produced on other minds, 
it had not an unhappy one on his own ; and gi^ang us to under- 
stand that the complaint of gloominess must be ascribed to an 
exclusive attention to certain portions, the subjects of which could 
truthfully be endowed with no other characteristics ; and to a neglect 
of those other portions which raise the em-aptured and Christian 
mind to the very heavens, in joyful anticipations of w^hat he describes 
as existing there, and in gTateful thank-offerings to the Divme bene- 
volence. 

" Then, farewell, Night ! Of darkness, now no more : 
Joy breaks, shines, triumphs : 'tis eternal Day. 
Shall that which rises out of nought complain 
Of a few evils, paid with endless joys ? 
My soul ! henceforth in sweetest union join 
The two supports of human happiness. 
Which some, erroneous, think can never meet ; — 
True taste of life, and constant thought of Death ; 
The thought of Death, sole victor of its dread ! 
Hope be thy jo}^, and probily thy skill ; 
Thy Patron He, whose diadem has dropp'd 
Yon gems of heaven ; eternity thy prize." 

In taking up the productions of any distinguished author there is 
naturally and universally felt a strong desire to learn something of 
his history and character : if he be a wiiter of genius, it is advan- 
tao-eous to most readers also, to be furnished mth a critical account 
of his WTitings, as a preparation for reading them ^vith an intelhgent 
appreciation of the excellencies and defects, or as a means of awak- 
ening the attention to all those qualities and objects that are intrin- 
sically most deser^^ng of it. The author of the present edition has 
therefore deemed it important to di-aw up a memoir of Dr. Young, 
though the materials for it are by no means abundant. He has 
availed himself of all he could command, and has embodied more 



INTRODUCTORY OBSERVATIONS. 11 

particulars of interest than are to be found in any one of tlie pub- 
lished accounts he has seen. Perhaps he may be charged with 
occupying too much space in exhibiting one particular phase of the 
poet's character, but it was one that has awakened more .curiosity, 
and has needed more explanation than any other. Besides, in 
offering this explanation incidents in themselves worthy of atten- 
tion are brought to view, and thus a double end has been accom- 
plished. 

The " Critical Estimate" that follows the memoir is made up 
chiefly of those criticisms from other authors, which he has judged 
most suitable to convey a correct and comprehensive view of the 
characteristic traits of the writings to which they relate ; arranged in 
a convenient order, and connected by such observations of his own 
as seemed to be required to place them in a just point of view. 

In the preparation of the " Notes," the path is an untrodden one, 
and as it lies through many an obscure, wild, and intricate forest, and 
abrupt defile, while it also traverses many a beautiful garden, and 
commands many a sublime and picturesque view of nature and of 
redemption, the office of a guide is felt to be one that might advan- 
tageously have been confided to a person of higher qualifications ; 
but as none such have appeared, or proffered their services, it is 
hoped the present attempt will be met with indulgence. If the 
annotator has fallen into mistakes himself, and has thus misled 
others in any part of the way, his only apology is, that he has put 
forth an honest and faithful endeavour to show his readers just \^hat 
the " Night Thoughts" contain, clearing away all obstructions to a 
full and close view of the objects both of beauty and of deformity, 
of subhmity and of insignificance. INIany a thoughtful and many a 
pleasant horn- has been passed in this endeavour ; but the author 
enjoys the additional satisfaction of having provided welcome and 
needful assistance to futui^e readei*s of the immortal "Night 



ii INTRODUCTORY OBSERVATIONS. 

TTioughts." To them, in the act of reading, he would give the 
same advice which the poem gives in selecting a friend ; " pause — 
ponder — sift." He would ad^^se that at least a fevr minutes be 
devoted almost daily to the perusal of its eloquent pages ; and that 
a fair trial be made, m the careful reading of the whole work, of its 
adaptation to enlarge and adorn the intellect, to improve the taste, 
to guide the affections and the voluntaiy powers, and to place before 
us those reahties and those truths which it chiefly concerns us, as 
beings framed for immortahty. 



LIFE AND CHARACTER OE EDWARD YOUNG, LL.D. 



This distinguished poet was born at Upliam, in Hampshire 
(England), in June, 1681, his father being then rector of a church in 
that town, and a Fellow of Winchester College, but subsequently he 
was appointed chaplain to William and Mary, the sovereigns of 
Great Britain, and previous to his death, in 1705, was preferred to 
the deanery of Salisbury. 

The higher branches of his education Young pursued in colleges 
of gi'eat repute and distinguished advantages — fii-st at Winchester 
College, and afterwards at the University of Oxford. In 1708, he 
was nominated by Archbishop Tennison to a law fellowship in All- 
Souls, having owed these privileges in part to the merits of his 
father, yet in a good measure also to his own intellectual progress 
and scholar-like deportment. We must not conceal the report, how- 
ever, that while connected with the last-named institution, his con- 
duct was by no means irreproachable, and that he was not the orna- 
ment of rehgion and morahty which he afterwards became. 

There is some reason to beheve that the disparaging report to 
which we have referred may have originated simply from the fact 
that he there became intimate with the younger Duke of Whar- 
ton, and that he was not ashamed to accept and enjoy the patronage 
as well as the companionship of this eccentric and dissolute noble- 
man, whom Pope, perhaps with some exaggeration, many years 
after thus portrayed : 

" Wharton, the scorn and wonder of our days. 
Whose ruling passion was the lust of praise •, 
Born with whate'er could win it from the wise 



14 LIFE AND CHARACTER 

Women and fools must like him or he dies : 
Though wondering senators hung on all he spoke, 
The club must hail him master of the joke. 

Thus with each gift of Nature and of Art, 
And wanting nothing but an honest heart ; 
Grown all to all, from no one vice exempt ; 
And most contemptible, to shun contempt ; 
His passion still, to covet general praise ; 
His life, to forfeit it a thousand ways : 

^ % % % % 

He dies, sad outcast of each church and state, 
And, harder still ! flagitious, yet not great." 

In regard to his connection with this man, and tlie patronage 
thus afforded him, we are to remember that the duke did not 
become a profligate at once, " the scorn and wonder of his day," so 
that an intimacy with him in early life may not have justly involved 
Young in reproach ; while, as to the debt of patronage, it may be 
said in extenuation of the act of becoming ite recipient, tbat it was 
merely a continuation of a favor which the earlier Duke of Wharton 
bad conferred on Young for the sake of his worthy father ; it was 
natural, therefore, that the present duke, who had probably been 
Young's schoolmate, and with whose genius and agTeeable manners 
he may have been highly pleased, should continue the favor which 
his father had so worthily bestowed. Nor has any e\^dence been 
produced to show that while oui' author associated with this nobleman 
and enjoyed his pecuniary favoi*s, he adopted any of his cUshonorable 
and immoral practices. In I7l7, he travelled with him into Ireland, 
and of this patronage Young afterwards, it is said, took pains to 
efface the remembrance. It would seem, from the testimony of 
Tindal, who was a fellow student with Young, and afterwards be- 
came a distinguished v^niiter in favor of deism, that Young in that 
early period was zealously devoted to the defence of Christianity. 
" The other boys," said Tindal, " I can always answer, because I 
always know whence they have their arguments, which I have read 
a hundred times ; but that fellow, Young, is continually pestering 
me with something of his own." 

Some of the alleged habits of Young during his collegiate life, 



OF EDWARD YOUNG, LL.D. 15 

may, for their smgularity, be worthy of record. At Oxford, the 
story was related, that when he engaged in the work of composing, 
he was accustomed to close his -vvdndow blinds, even at mid-day, and 
to light his lamp ; and that skuhs and other bones, and some instru- 
ments of death, were placed around him, as the ornaments of his 
study. This singular habit may be regarded as being at once the 
indication and the promoter of that gloominess of imagination for 
which he became so distinguished, and which fitted him to ^Tite so 
impressively on various topics which are most largely treated in the 
" Night Thoughts," and in the " Last Day." 

The following anecdote, as ihustrative of Young's sphit and 
energy, may be worth relating. In the early part of his life he was 
fond of music, and touched the German flute with great skill. On 
one occasion, while saihng upon the Thames with several ladies, he 
performed a few times and then put the flute in his pocket. Just at 
this moment some officers rowing by insolently asked him why he 
stopped plapng. " For the same reason that I began to play," said 
Young, " to please myself" One of them immediately ordered him 
to resume his playing, and threatened to put him into the river 
should he refuse to do it forthwith. The ladies beconung much 
alarmed at such rudeness, Young, for then* sake, comphed with the 
order, and played till both parties reached Vauxhall, where they 
passed the evening. Young, having closely examined the ofiicer who 
issued the order, took an opportunity, in one of the dark walks, to 
teU him that he expected him to meet him at a certain place in the 
morning, to render him satisfaction for the insult of the preceding 
afternoon, and stated that he mads choice of swords as the weapons 
to be used. The ofiicer kept the appointment, but was much sur- 
prised to see Young advance towards him with a horse pistol, with 
which he declared he would instantly shoot the officer through the 
head if he did not proceed to dance a hornpipe. After some hesita- 
tion and remonstrance, the officer, not daring to dechne, yielded to 
the demand, under the comdction, probably, of his own impertinence 
the day before, and made a satisfactory acknowledgment, and thus 
the affair ended. 

At an early period of life the genius of Young for poetry began 
to be developed, and gave origin to several productions which gained 



16 LIFE AND CHARACTER 

him considerable reputation. From his youth he is said to have felt 
that passion for glory which ordinarily indicates the possession of 
great talents, and which often counteracts a passion for the acquisi- 
tion of property. But, with Young, both glory and fortune were 
simultaneously and eagerly pursued, both early and late in hfe. In 
Night VII. he declares : 

" Though disappointments in anabition pain. 
And though success disgusts ; yet still, Lorenzo, 
In vain we strive to pluck it fronn our hearts ; 
By nature planted for the noblest ends. 
Ht ^ ^ % ^ 'k 

What is it, but the love of praise, inspires, 
Matures, refines, embellishes, exalts 
Earth's happiness ? From that, the delicate, 
The grand, the marvellous of civil life," &c. 

It is represented to have been to him a great luxury to paint the 
miseries of the world, because it did not immediately gratify his am- 
bitious aspirations ; and the remark has been made, that if he had 
been honored in his mature years with the name, place, and emolu- 
ments of a bishopric, it is quite doubtful whether the "Night 
Thoughts" would ever have been elaborated and given to the world. 
If this be so, we certainly have reason to congratulate ourselves and 
others that his ambitious designs were not crowned vvith success. 
That he was not indifferent to distinctions and emoluments of this 
sort, is plain enough, from his constant habit of dedicating his poeti- 
cal productions to pei-sons of noble birth and of opulence ; to such 
chiefly as were able to promote, if they saw fit, these upward aims 
of the poet. The same thing is plainly to be seen in some portions 
of the " Nig^t Thoughts" themselves. 

Among his first poetical adventures was an epistle to the Right 
Honorable George, Lord Lansdowne, published in 1*712. In this 
poem, it has been truly observed, he began the siege of patronage, 
in which we find him still engaged, and still unsuccessfully, in the 
very dechne of hfe, 

" Twice told the period spent on stubborn Troy, 
Court favor, j'-et untaken, I besiege.'' 



OF EDWARD YOUNG, LL.D. l7 

His poem od tlie " Last Day" is prefaced by an inscription to no 
humbler personage than the queen. It is said, however, in explana- 
tion of this, that he had been employed as a writer to the Court, 
and to have received for this service a regular salary. To this fact 
Dean Swift is supposed to refer in his Rhapsody on Poetry. Speak- 
ing of the Court, he says : 

" Whence Gay was banished in disgrace, 
Where Pope will never show his face, 
Where Y — must torture his invention 
To flatter knaves, or lose his pension." 

The conclusion that Yoimg was mtended is plainly sustained by 
the following lines from the same poem : 

" Attend ye Popes, and Youngs, and Gays, 
And tune your harps, and strew your bays, 
You panegyrics here provide, 
You cannot err on flattery's side." 

For the purpose of illustrating the character and aims of the 
author at the period referred to, when he was about thirty years of 
age, the substance of the dedication to the queen is here adduced : — 
It awards great praise to the queen for the victories achieved under 
her reign and direction, but proceeds to say, that the author is more 
pleased to see her rise from this lower world, soarmg above the 
clouds, passing the first and second heavens, and leading the fixed 
stars behind her ; nor will he lose her there, he adds, but keep her 
still in view through the boundless space on the other side of crea- 
tion, in her journey towards eternal bliss, till he beholds the heaven 
of heavens open, and angels receiving and conveying her stiU on- 
ward fi.*om the stretch of his imagination, which tires in her pinsuit 
and falls back again to earth ! 

- Another graphic illustration of the character and aims of the 
author about this period, is found in the history of his next pubh- 
cation, " The Force of Rehgion," which is founded on the incidents 
connected with the execution of Lady Jane Gray, and her husband 
Lord Guilford Dudley, 1554. In the dedication of it to the coun- 
tess of Sahsbury, he expresses the hope that it may be some excuse 



18 LIFE AND CHARACTER 

for the author's presumption, that the story could not have been read 
without the thoughts of the countess of SaHsbury, though it had 
been dedicated to another. " To behold," he adds, " a person only 
virtuous stirs in us a prudent regret ; to behold a person only amia^ 
ble to the sight, warms us with a religious indignation ; but to turn 
our eyes to a countess of Salisbury, gives us pleasure and improve- 
ment ; it works a sort of miracle ; occasions the bias of our nature 
to fall off from sin, and makes our very senses and affections con- 
verts to our religion, and promoters of our duty." Such a comph- 
mentary effusion was probably not Avithout its pecuniary reward. 

After queen Anne's death, in 1714, he prepares a poem on the 
sad event, inscribed to Addison, in which he takes good care to 
introduce a flattering panegyric on the accession of George I. to the 
throne, and this, doubtless, was the chief design. Among other 
things, he declares, though at the very outset of his reign, that his 
new subjects bless the gods for such a king and asked no more. 
This poem was not introduced, however, by the author into his edi- 
tion of his complete works. Perhaps he became ashamed of its 
flatteries and selfish designs. 

His famous tragedy, " The Revenge," appeared in 1721, and, as 
a matter of course, was dedicated to some individual of noble rank 
and ample means. The duke of Wharton was selected for the dis- 
tinction. " Your grace," says the dedication, " has been pleased to 
make yourself accessary to the following scenes, not only by suggest- 
ing the most beautiful incident in them, but by making all possible 
provision for the success of the whole." He further speaks in this 
document of his patron in the following courtly terms : " My pre- 
sent fortune is his bounty, and my future his care ; which, I will 
venture to say, will be always remembered to his honor ; since he, I 
know, intended his generosity as an encouragement to merit ; though, 
through his very pardonable partiality to one who beare him so sin- 
cere a duty and respect, I suppose to receive the benefit of it." This 
dedication, having answered its purpose, was, hke the others referred 
to, excluded from the author's own edition of his complete works. 
To the duke he appears to have been indebted for two annuities, one 
bearing date of March 24, 1719 ; the other was dated July 10, 
1722 : he also received a bond for a large amount in 1721. 



OF EDWARD YOUNa, Ll.D. 19 

" The Love of Fame," the universal passion, embracing several 
satires, ])uhl\shed in 1*728, was dedicated to the duke of Dorset, 
Lord Wilmington, Sir Robert Walpole, &c. It is said that this 
poem secured to him from the duke of Grafton the handsome 
amount of two thousand pounds ; yet this account is not univer- 
sally credited. 

His ability to flatter may be discerned in a few hues which we 
shall quote from the first of these Satires, addressed to the duke of 
Dorset. 

" My verse is satire ; Dorset, lend your ear, 
And patronise a muse you cannot /ear. 
To poets sacred is a Dorset's name. 
Their wonted passport through the gates of fame. 
^ % % ^ ^ ^ 

Satire ! had I thy Dorset's force divine, 
A knave or fool should perish in each line ; 
Though for the first all Westminster should plead, 
And for the last all Gresham intercede." 

None better than our author understood the susceptibility of the 
human heart to the influence of praise : none, perhaps, have more 
frequently employed it to advance his own fame or fortune. In this 
same satire he most truly says : — 

" The love of praise, howe'er concealed by art, 
Reigns, more or less, and glows in every heart : 
The proud, to gain it, toils on toils endure ; 
The modest shun it, but to make it sure. 
O'er globes and sceptres, now on thrones it swells ; 
Now trims the midnight lamp in college cells : 
'Tis Tory, Whig; it plots, prays, preaches, pleads, 
Harangues in senates, squeaks in masquerades. 
Nor ends with life ; but nods in sable plumes, 
Adorns our hearse, and flatters on our tombs?^ 

It would be diflicult, perhaps, to exculpate om- author from that 
offence which he so well satirizes in other poets. He was not always 
careful to bestow his exuberant praise upon deserving characters. 
In his desire to obtain the notice and the patronage of gi-eatness, he 
was not always sufficiently discriminating in regard to another qua- 



20 LIFE AND CHARACTER 

litj, more deserving — that of goodness. If he erred, it was not 
through ignorance or inadvertence ; for in the satire ah-eady quoted, 
we find some very just invectives upon the prostitution of poetry to 
the adulation of vice. 

" Shall Poesy, like law, turn wrong to right, 
And dedications wash an ^ihiop white, 
Set up each senseless wretch for nature's boast, 
On whom praise shines, as trophies on a post ? 
Shall funeral eloquence her colours spread, 
And scatter roses on the wealthy dead? 
Shall authors smile on such illustrious days, 
And satirise with nothing — but their praise ?" 

It is the opinion of Croker that the comparative neglect into 
which Young's works have fallen, may bo attributed in some degree 
to his disgusting flattery of his patrons, male and female ; all his wit, 
pathos, and force — and they are very great — not being able to coun- 
teract the effect of the deplorable adulation which he practised. 
From this fault, however, the " Night Thoughts" are almost entirely 
free. 

In further illustration of our author's peculiarities, as a seeker of 
royal and court patronage and distinction, it may be mentioned, 
that upon the accession of George IL, and the dehvery of his first 
speech to the Parhament, in 1728, a poem was soon pubhshed, on 
the basis of some remarks with reference to British seamen con- 
tained in that speech. " Ocean" was, accordingly, the title prefixed 
to it. It is addressed to the king. And how does he speak of him ? 
Among other fine things, he says : — 

" To whom should I address my song ? 
To whom but thee 1 
The boundless sea, 
And grateful muse to George belong. 

¥: vc * * 

What hero's praise 

Can fire my lays 
Like his with whom my lay begun ? 

Justice sincere, 

And courage clear, 
Rise the tv/o columns of his throne. 



OF EDWARD YOUNG, LL.D. 21 

How formed for sway ! 

Who look, obey ; 
They read the monarch in his port. 

Their love and awe 

Supply the law 
And his own lustre makes the court. 

^Sr * * -* * 

By godlike arts 
Enthron'd in hearts 
Our bosom-lord o'er wills presides." 

Our author had not yet become a clergyman. In 1714, he 
received his degree of Bachelor of Civil Law : in 1719, the degTee 
of Doctor of Laws — the year in which died Addison, to whom 
English hteratm-e is so deej^ly indebted. A particular intimacy- 
seems to have long subsisted between these two individuals. They 
were in the habit, it is said, of communicating to each other what- 
ever verses they composed ; and when Addison died, it was beauti- 
fully and truthfully said of him by his smwiving friend and admirer : 

" And guilt's chief foe in Addison has fled." 

Such (says Dodsley's Annual Register, 1765) was the success of 
the poem on the " Last Day," and of the poem entitled, " Force 
of Rehgion," in an age when the noblest productions were common, 
and even the meanest rewarded, that he was taken particular notice 
of by several of the nobility ; and the tm-n of his mind leading him 
to the church, he went into orders, and, in 1728, was made one of 
the king's chaplains : he afterwards, in 1730, obtained the living of 
Welwyn, in Hertfordshire, worth about five hundred pounds per 
annum ; and though ever in the full blaze of favour, he never had 
the fortune to rise to greater preferment. Indeed, during the last 
reign (George II.) the arts of poetry or of real eloquence were but 
httle promoted or encom-aged from the throne. Young could 
expect no great honours from a master who hated poetry, and styled 
all poets with the odious appellation of "Buffoons." For some 
years before the death of the late prince of Wales, Young, who was 
in favour with his royal highness, attended the court pretty constantly, 
but upon liis decease all his hopes of chm^ch advancement vanished. 



22 LIFE AND CHARACTER 

and towards the latter end of his hfe his very desires of fortune 
seemed to forsake him. 

The poem aheady alluded to, and quoted in part, concludes with 
a " Wish," some stanzas of which ^\ill serve to throw light upon the 
author's character. They present it under an aspect quite unlike the 
manifestations of it hitherto furnished, and those which appear in 
the subsequent portion of his life. 

" In landscapes green 

True bliss is seen, 
With innocence, in shades, she sports •, 

In wealthy towns 

Proud labour frowns, 
And painted sorrow smiles in courts. 

These scenes untried 

Subdued my pride, 
To Fortune's arrows bared my breast, 

Till wisdom came, 

A hoary dame ! 
And told me pleasure was in rest. 

Oh may I steal 

Along the vale 
Of humble life, secure from foes ! 

My friend sincere, 

My judgment clear. 
And gentle business my repose. 

My mind be strong 

To combat wrong ! 
Grateful, O king ! for favours shown ! 

Soft to complain 

For others' pain, 
And bold to triumph o'er my own ! 

Prophetic schemes 

And golden dreams 
May I unsanguine cast away ! 

Have what I have. 

And live, not leave. 
Enamoured of the present day I 



OF EDWARD YOUNG, LL.D. 23 

My hours my own, 

My faults unknown, 
My chief revenue in content ! 

Then leave one beam 

Of honest fanae, 
And scorn the laboured monument ! 

Unhurt my urn, 

Till that great turn 
When mighty nature's self shall die ; 

Time cease to chide 

With human pride, 
Sunk in the ocean of eternity." 

Soon after entering upon tlie duties of his charge in Welwyn, a 
playful incident occurred, which may be related as an illustration of 
his extemporaneous wit and humour. Walking in his garden, in 
company with two ladies, a servant announced to him that a gentle- 
man was in the house who desired to speak with him. " Tell him," 
says Young, " I am too happily engaged to change my situation." 
The ladies insisted, however, that he should leave them and repair 
to the house, as his visitor was a man of rank, his patron, his friend. 
Their persuasions having no effect, one of the ladies took him by the 
right arm, and the other by the left, and led him to the garden- 
gate, when, discovering that resistance was vam, he pohtely bowed, 
laid his hand upon his breast, and in that expressive manner for 
which he was ever remarkable, he pom-ed forth impromptu the fol- 
lowing hues : — 

" Thus Adam look'd when from the garden driven, 
And thus disputed orders sent from heaven : 
Like him I go, and yet to go am loth ; 
Like him I go, for angels drove us both. 
Hard vi^as his fate, but mine still more unkind ; 
His Eve went with him, but mine stays behind." 

She did not " stay behind" always ; for, not many m.onths subse- 
quently to this incident, one of these persons. Lady Ehzabeth Lee, 
walked with him to Hymen's altar, having at the time a son and 
two daughters by her former husband. This son was in the army, 
and died soon after this period. The eldest daughter married Mr. 



24 LIFE AND CHARACTER 

Temple, a son of Lord Palmereton, and soon fell into consumption^ 
and died at Lyons, in France, on her way to Nice, in 1736, mthin a 
year after lier marriage, and at ttie early age of seventeen. She is 
the Narcissa of the " Night Thoughts," and some interesting par- 
ticulars are therein given, in the text and notes, of her lamented end. 

In the choice of a Tvife, it thus will be seen that Young was 
actuated by the same regard, as in other matters, to worldly honour 
and distinction ; having been married, in 1731, to the pei-son already 
mentioned — Lady Ehzabeth Lee, daughter of the earl of Litchfield, 
and widow of Colonel Lee. We shall have something more to say 
of her in the notes to the " Night Thoughts." 

This justly celebrated poem was commenced, in 1741, having 
originated from gj-eat domestic affliction in the loss of his ^Yife, and 
of her son and daughter. In the Seventh Night he thus patheti- 
cally writes : — 

. . . " Friends, our chief treasure, how they drop ! 
Lucia, N arcissa fair, Philander, gone ! 
The grave, Hke fabled Cerberus, has oped 
A triple mouth ; and, in an awful voice, 
Loud calls my soul, and utters all I sing." 

It may be added, however, in further illustration of our author's 
tastes and fixed habits of thought, that he inscribed the several 
books, except the seventh and eighth, of this his most popular poem, 
to distinguished and noble personages ; and in Book IV., which he 
wrote at a somewhat advanced age, he lets us understand that he 
had been an assiduous aspirant after the favour of the great and the 
wealthy. He had now for ten years and mor« been occupjing the 
rectory of Welw}Ti, besides the lordship -of the manor connected 
with the rectory. No one can read the early portion of the Fourth 
Nio'ht, where he speaks of himself and his coevals, without discover- 
ino- that his ambitious designs had been far from successful ; that 
discontent was preying upon his mind, inducing a gloom which 
otherwise would not have rested upon it ; that his views of the 
world are occasionally too much embrotuned by indulging in the 
state of mind thus induced ; and that his intellectual perceptions of 
the vanity of earthly gTandem- and distinction had failed to impreg- 



OP EDWARD YOUNG, LL.D. 25 

nate sufficiently the affections of his heart. He complains of yonnger 
men coming up on the stage of hfe and pushing him from the 
scene. 

"Ah me ! the dire effect 
Of loitering here, of death defrauded long ; 

Of old so gracious (and let that suffice) ] 

My very master knows me not. 

Shall I dare say, peculiar is the fate ? 
I've been so long remembered, I'm forgot. 
When in his courtiers' ears I pour my plaint, 
They drink it as the nectar of the great, 
And squeeze my hand, and beg me come to-morrow ! 
Refusal ! can'st thou wear a smoother form ? 

Twice told the period spent on stubborn Troy, 
Court- favour, yet untaken, I besiege ; 
Ambition's ill-judged effort to be rich. 
Alas ! ambition makes my little less, 
Im-bittering the possess'd. Why wish for more ? 
Wishing, of all employments, is the worst !" 

Yet he afterwards speaks of the goodness of Providence in assign- 
ing him a quiet moral position in which his heart was at rest, com- 
paring himself to a shipwrecked mariner who had been thrown safa 
ashore on a single plank, the world [a stately bark) ha^dng gone to 
pieces on dangerous seas. How beautifully he thus carries out the 
figure : — 

" I hear the tumult of the distant throng 
As that of seas remote, or dying storms. 
And meditate on scenes more silent still ; 
Pursue my theme, and fight the fear of death." 

He seems then to have been conscious of the folly of his previous 
ambitious couree, at least while he was penning those uiipressive 
" Night Thoughts ;" but there is evidence that some years after- 
wards he again fell into his old habits of seeking preferment or 
its emoluments. 

" If this song lives, posterity shall know 
One, though in Britain born, with courtiers bred, 
Who thought e'en gold might come a day too late, 
Nor on his subtile death-bed plann'd his scheme 
2 



26 LIFE AXD CHARACTER 

For future vacancies in Church or State, 

Some avocation deeming it — to die 5 

Unbit by rage canine of dying rich : 

Guilt's blunder ! and the loudest laugh of hell !" 

That at the time of Trritiiig this poem,, he was indined to meddle 
iu the poutical contests of the coimtiy seems probable from some 
Hues in the Eighth Night — 

" Think no post needful that demands a knave. 
When late our civil helm was shitting hands 
So P thought : think better if you can." 

It must be added, however, that in composing the last hnes of the 
poem he manifests a weariness of courting earthly patrons, and 
wisely counsels his soul to direct its regards to a more powerful and 
benignant Patron. 

" Henceforth 
Thy patron He, w^hose diadem has dropp'd 
Yon gems of heaven : eternity thy prize : 
And leave the racers of the world their own, 
Their /eaif/icr, and their /ro^/i, for endless toils : 
They part with all for that which is not bread : 
They mortify, they starve^ on wealth, fame, power ; 
And laugh to scorn the fools that aim at more?^ 

These extracts, to which some characteristic and valuable additions 
might be made, constitute an accurate portrait of the interior as well 
aj the exterior hfe of Dr. Young. Whatever inferences we may 
diaw of an unfavourable nature with respect to his practical wisdom 
and consistency, we iiiust see that his experience cannot fail to prove 
highly important to others ; that he writes not from observation 
merely, but fi'om long and varied, and at length bitter experience of 
the vanity of this world, and of the folly of those who seek no higher 
honours, and no more substantial and satisfying pleasures than it is 
capable of bestowing even upon its most ardent votaries. When 
waiting so eloquently upon fame, riches, pleasure, death, and eter- 
nity, he reminds us of Solomon in his old age writing his Ecclesi- 
astes, in which he speaks of having tried the various experiences of 
human hfe in all its gayer and most pleasmg scenes, and then con- 



OF EDWARD YOUNG, LL.D. 27 

liimself obliged, in all honesty and trutlifulness, to pronounce 
them " vanity of vanity." The testimony of such a man, writing 
from experience, as well as under the dictates of inspiration, should 
be received without hesitation : his admonitions are worthy of pre- 
eminent regard. So, upon learning the course of life pursued by 
Dr. Young, giving him some of the best opportunities of observing 
its more attractive scenes, and much experience of its distinctions 
and honours, we are prepared to yield the more entire deference to 
his statements, counsels, and conclusions. His disappointment at 
the gratifications of the present scene had been made beneficial to 
his spiritual interests, by carrying his imagination and his intellect 
forward to the scenes of an eternal state of being, revealed to him 
in the Holy Scriptures. Upon these he writes with great subhmity 
and pc>wer ; and especially upon that wonderful process of redemp- 
tion, which secures a bhssful immortahty to the pure in heart — to 
those made such by the same benignant process. 

Yet these truths seem to have had so little effect in cui-ing his 
inordinate love of the world, or his hankering after its emoluments, 
that some good men have even expressed a doubt of the soundness 
of Dr. Young's ]oiety. The Rev. Richard Cecil, of London, holds 
this lano'uao'c in reo'ard to him. " Youno- is, of all other men, one 
of ■ the most striking exam.ples of the disunion of piety from truth* 
If we read his most true, impassioned, and impressive estimate of 
the world and of rehgion, we shall think it impossible that he was 
uninfluenced by his subject. It is, however, a melancholy fact, that 
he was hunting after preferment at eighty years old, and felt and 
spoke hke a disappointed man. The truth was pictured in his mind 
in most vivid colours. He felt it while he was writing. He felt 
himself on a retired spot, and he saw death, the mighty hunter, pur- 
suing the unthinking world. He saw redemption — its necessity and 
its grandeur ; and while he looked on it, he spoke as a man would 
speak whose mind and heart were deeply engrossed. Not^vithstand- 
ing all this, the view did not reach his heart. Had I preached in 
his pulpit mth the fervor and interest that his ' Night Thoughts' 
discover, he would have been terrified. He told a fiiend of mine, 
who went to him under rehgious fears, that he must ffo more into 
the world .^" 



28 LIFE AND CHARACTER 

Dr. Jolinson seems to liave entertained a somewhat similar 
opinion of our autlior. The bishop of St. Asaph having once 
remarked to him that from the writings of Horace it appeared that 
he was a veiy happy man, Johnson rephed — " We have no reason 
to beheve that, my lord ; for Dr. Young, who pined for preferment, 
tallis with contempt of it in his writings, and affects to despise 
everything that he did not despise." 

It here becomes a pertinent and interesting inquiry, how it hap- 
pens that, although Dr. Young lived nearly forty years after taking 
orders in the church, a period which included one entii^e reign, which 
was uncommonly long, and part of another, he was never thought 
worthy of the least preferment ; at all events did not receive it. A 
plausible answer to this inquiry has been given by one of his biogra- 
phers, Mr. Croft. 

" The author of the ' Night Thoughts,' " he says, " ended his days 
upon a lining which came to him from his college without any favor, 
and to which he probably had an eye when he determined on the 
Church. The neglect of Young is by some ascribed to his ha\ing 
attached himself to the prince of Wales, and to his having preached 
an offensive sermon at St. James's. It is said that in the preceding 
reign he had two hundred pounds a year through the patronage of 
Walpole, and that when any one spoke to the king in favor of Young 
his reply was, " He has a pension." There is a very pohte letter 
from archbishop Seeker which throws some hght on this inquiry • 
just enough at least to show at what a late period in hfe the author 
of the " Night Thoughts" sohcited preferment. 

" Deanery of St. Paul's, July 8th, 1758. 
" Good Dk. Young — I have long wondered that more suitable notice of 
your great merit hath not been taken by persons in power ; but how to 
remedy the omission I see not. No encouragement hath ever been given me 
to mention things of this nature to his majesty. And, therefore, in all likeli- 
hood, the only consequence of doing it would be to weaken the little influ- 
ence which else I may possibly have on some other occasions. Your fortune 
and your reputation set you above the need of advancement ; and your senti- 
ments, above that concern for it, on your own account, which, on that of the 
public, is sincerely felt by 

" Your loving brother, 

'• Thos. Gaunt." 



OF EDWARD YOUNG, LL.D. 29 

At length, in 1Y61, when Dr. Young had attained the age of 
fourscore, he was appointed Clerk of the Closet to the princess dow- 
ager of Wales. 

One obstacle, it is said, must have stood not a little in the vray of 
that preferment after which his whole life seems to have panted ; 
though he took orders^ he never entirely shook off pohtics ; and thus 
if he gained some friends, he made many enemies. 

It is further said, that in the latter part of his life he was in the 
habit of holding himself out for a man retired from the world ; and 
he seems to have been taken, doubtless unwillingly, at his word. 
Notwithstanding his frequent complaints of being neglected, no hand 
was extended to draw him from that retirement of which he declared 
himself enamoured. As Croft further remarks — he who retires from 
the world will find himself in reahty deserted as fast, if not faster, 
by the world. 

The author's own sentiments and course in making poetry sub- 
ser^dent to his interests and reputation, may be handsomely illus- 
trated by an extract from the preface to his Satires. He had made 
some observations " which remind him of Plato's fable of the Birth 
of Love, one of the prettiest fables of all antiquity ; which will hold 
liliewise with regard to modern poetry. ' Love,' says he, ' is the son 
of the goddess of poverty and the god of riches : from his father 
he has daring genius, his elevation of thought, his building castles 
in the air, his prodigality, his neglect of things serious and useful, 
his vain opinion of his own merit, and his affection of preference and 
distinction : from his mother he inherits his indigence, which makes 
him a constant beggar of favom*s ; that importunity with which he 
begs ; his flattery, his servility, his fear of being despised, which is 
inseparable from him. This addition may be made : — that poetry, 
like love, is a Httle subject to blindness, which makes her mistake 
her way to preferments and honours : that she has her satirical 
quiver ; and, lastly, that she retains a dutiful admiration of her 
father'' s family ; but divides her favours, and generally lives with her 
mother''s relatives. However, this is not necessity but choice. 
Were wisdom her governess, she might have much more of the 
father than the mother, especially in such an age as this which 
shows a due passion for her charms." 



,0 LIFE AND CHARACTER 

An anecdote may here be related, which is told by RufFhead, in 
his hfe of Pope, concerning the singular course adopted by Young 
in preparing for the clerical profession. To the absolute truth of 
the anecdote, however, our assent is not easily given. When he 
determined to change the profession of law for divinity, instead of 
asking advice of Bishops Sherlock, Atterbury, or Hare, as to the 
course of study he should pursue, he directed his inquiry on the 
point to his poetical fiiend, Alexander Pope, who in a jocose mood 
suggested to him the earnest study of the writings of Thomas Aqui- 
nas, one of the schoolmen of the dark ages. In compliance with the 
suggestion, regarded as sincere and profitable. Dr. Young procured 
the learned and mystic treasure, sought an obscure retreat in the 
suburbs of the city, where he might be free from interruption, and 
there devoted himself to the study of Aquinas. His witty guide in 
theology, hearing nothing of him for half a year, and apprehending 
he might have carried the jest farther than was profitable, found him 
just in time to prevent what Ruff head calls " an irretrievable de- 
rangement." If it be true that he devoted six months' study to the 
"v^rritings of such an ingenious disputer as Aquinas, it may ha^^e con- 
tributed to the shrewdness and epigrammatical point and intellectual 
penetration displayed by our author ; yet his earlier wiitings abound 
in similar characteristics. It is certain that if he had mastered the 
entire works of Aquinas, amounting to seventeen folio volumes, and 
those in the Latin tongue, he had sufficient employment for more 
than six months of hard, intellectual toil, especially when the cha- 
racter of those volumes, as described by Hallam, is taken into 
account. Every question, he says, is discussed with a remarkable 
observation of distinctions, and an unremitting desire both to com- 
prehend and to distribute a subject ; and to present it to the mind 
in every possible light, and to trace all its relations and consequences. 
The writings of the schoolmen embrace a vast compass of thought 
and learning ; but their distinctions often confuse instead of gi^'ing 
light, and the difficulties which they encounter are too arduous for 
them ; and we find it impossible, as must generally be the case, to 
read so much as a few pages consecutively. 

It is quite possible, nay, very certain, that Dr. Young did not con- 
fine himself in preparing for the duties of the pulpit to the writings 



OF EDWARD YOUNG, LL.D. 31 

of Aquinas ; for his " Night Thoughts" indicate that he was no 
mean theologian ; that he was a well-read divine. Nowhere are 
the great facts and doctrines of Christianity more clearly and im- 
pressively described than in that remarkable production. But while 
he thus made honourable attainments in the science of theology, and 
was an earnest and pathetic preacher, he seems to have been con- 
vinced that his surest road to honour and preferment was the path 
of poesy rather than theology. His pubhcations, therefore, are 
of the poetic order, almost exclusively. Tv/o or three essays in 
prose, and a few sermons, constitute the full amount of his prose 
authorship. Soon after taking orders, in 1729, he preached a ser- 
mon before the House of Commons, on the martyrdom of Charles 
I., entitled, " An Apology for Princes, or the Reverence due to Gov- 
ernment." In 1754 he put out " The Centaur not Fabulous ; in six 
Letters to a friend, on the Life in Vogue." The third letter is quite 
celebrated for the graphic portrait which it presents of " the gaj, 
young, noble, ingenious, accomplished, and most wretched Alta- 
mont," whose last melancholy exclamations were — " my principles 
have poisoned my friend, my extravagance has beggared my boy, 
my unkindness has murdered ray wife !' Under the name of Alta- 
mont Lord Easton is supposed to have been represented. 

In 1759, among the last public efforts of his pen, and one of the 
most rem.arkable, was a ^^ Letter on Original Composition^^'' the 
purpose of which was to do justice to the death-bed of Addison, " to 
erect" (as he himself expresses it) " a monumental marble to the 
memory of an old friend." Of this letter it has been observed that 
when we consider it as the work of a man turned of eighty, we are 
not to be surprised so much that it has faults, as how it should come 
to have beauties. It is indeed strange that the load of fourscore 
yeai-s was not able to keep down that vigorous fancy which here 
bursts the bounds of judgment, and breaks the slavish shackles of 
age and experience. This work seems a brightening before death, 
and it had been well if the author had stopped here ; but that taper 
which blazed as it dechned, was at last sham-efully exhibited to the 
public as burning in the socket, in a work called " The Resignation," 
the last but the w^orst of all Dr. Young's performances. But this 
Mure in old age could no way diminish the fame that he had been 



32 LIFE AND CHARACTER 

earning by a life of more than sixty years of excellence. As a poet 
he was still considered the only palladium left of ancient genius ; 
and as a Christian, one of the finest examples of primeval piety." 

The poem thus severely characterized was written at the re- 
quest of the celebrated Mrs. Mary Wortley Montague, and ad- 
di'essed to the Hon. Mrs. BoscaAven, the widow of a British admi- 
ral, to aid her in the exercise of due submission to providence in the 
death of her husband. Lady Montague having learned that her 
bereaved friend was in the habit of reading the " Night Thoughts," 
and had derived from them much consolation, proposed a visit to 
the author, and offered to accompany her. The visit was performed, 
much to the satisfaction of both. The conversation of Dr. Young- 
proved to be highly soothing to the afflicted widow, and deeply 
interesting to her sympathizing friend. The visit of these ladies, in 
like manner, seems to have been eminently gratifying to the aged 
poet and divine. He compliments them highly in the poem, Mrs. 
Montague at least. 

" Yet write I must. A lady sues ; 
How shameful her request ! 
My train in labour for dull rhyme ; 
Hers teeming with the best !" 

In a subsequent part of the same poem, addi'essing Mrs. Bosca- 
wen, he continues : 

" And friend you have, and I the same, 
Whose prudent, soft address 
Will bring to life those healing thoughts 
Which died in your distress." 

Lady Montague, by her visit to Dr. Young, seems to have been 
impressed not less favorably towards him ; having asserted, that his 
unbounded genius appeared to greater advantage in the companion 
than even in the author ; that the Christian was in him a character 
still more inspired, more enraptured, more subhme than the poet ; 
and that in his ordinary conversation, 

« letting down the golden chain from high. 

He drew his audience upward to the sky." 



OF EDWARD YOUNG, LL.D. 33 

Wliile tlie former part of this consolatory poem was being committed 
to the press by Mr. Samuel Richardson, the work was suddenly and 
unexpectedly arrested by the death of this mdividual, a particulaa' 
friend of the poet ; who accordingly introduces the painful incident 
in the part of the production which he was then writing. Thus, while 
engaged in consoling his noble acquaintance, he was unexpectedly 
brought into circumstances of affliction himself, which called for the 
same consolations he was endeavoring to administer — 

" Now need /, Madam ! yow support. 
How exquisite the smart ; 
How critically-timed the news 

Which strikes me to the heart ! 
% ^ % ^ ^ 

When heaven would kindly set us free, 

And earth's enchantments end ; 
It takes the most effectual means, 

And robs us of a friend." 

He then introduces an honorable testimony to the genius and 
merit of Richardson, which is worth preservation. 

" Whose frequent aid brought kind relief 
In my distress of thought, 
Ting'd with his beams my cloudy page 
And beautified a fault. 

To touch our passions' secret springs, 

Was his peculiar care ; 
And deep his happy genius dived 

In bosoms of the fair : 

Nature, which favors to the few, 

All art beyond, imparts, 
To him presented at his birth 

The key of human hearts. 

But not to me by him bequeath'd 

His gentle, smooth address ; 
His tender hand to touch the wound 
In throbbing of distress." 

The Poem from which the above is taken was not prepared, the 



34 LIFE AXD CHARACTER 

author says, for publication, but was elicited by tbe fact that some 
extracts from tlie few copies which were given away, had been 
inserted in the pubhc papers, and he feared that an imperfect edi- 
tion might thus fall under the public eye. The critics, except Dr 
Johnson, one of the most eminent, have bestowed great severity of 
remai'k upon its hteraiy demerits : but the advanced age at which 
it was composed may furnish a shield large enough to intercept all 
their darts. It would have been wise m him, however, if, as one 
suggests, he had, before publishing, considered the just remark of 
Horace : — 

" Semel emissum, volat irrevocabile verbum :" 

and if also he had answered the importunity of his friends, solicit- 
ing its pubhcation, in the language of the same poet, who had then 
seen but few more than half the yeai-s of Dr. Young. 

" Prima dicte mihi, summa dicende Camoena, 
Spectatum satis, et donatum jam rude quaeris, 
Maecenas, iterum antique me includere ludo ? 
Non eadem est setas. non mens." 

" Oh thou, to whom the Muse first tuned her lyre, 
Whose friendship shall her latest song inspire, 
Wherefore, Maecenas, would you thus engage 
Your bard, dismissed with honor from the stage, 
Again to venture in the lists of fame, 
His youth, his genius, now no more the same." 

[Francises Horace. 

It was about this period that our author received a \isk from the 
excellent John N'e^\ton, of London, who has thus famihai-ly described 
it in a private letter to his wife, bearing date of January 6, 1759 : 
" I put up at Welhng (Welwyn), sent a note to Dr. Young, and 
received for answer that he would be glad to see me. I spent an 
hour ^dth him. His conversation was agreeable, and much answer- 
able to what I expected from the author of the ' Night Thoughts.' 
He seemed likewise pleased \^dth me. It would have surprised you 
to hear how I let my tongue run before this great man. He ap- 
proved my design of entering the ministry, and said many encourag- 



OF EDWARD YOUNG, LL.D. 35 

mg things upon the subject ; and when he dismissed me, desired 
that I would never pass near his house without calhng upon him." 

Here may also be inserted as properly as anywhere, an extract 
from one of Cowper's letters to Lady Hesketh, dated July 12, 1776. 
" Our mentioning Bishop Newton's treatise on the prophecies brings 
to my mind an anecdote of Dr. Young, who, you know, died lately 
at Welwyn. Dr. Cotton, who was intimate with him, paid him a 
.visit about a fortnight before he was seized with his last illness. 
The old man was then in perfect health. The antiquity of his per- 
son, the g^a^■ity of utterance, and the earnestness with which he dis- 
coursed about rehgion, gave him, in the Doctor's eye, the appear- 
ance of a prophet. They had been delivering their sentiments on 
this book, when Young closed the conference thus : — ' My friend, 
there are two considerations upon which my faith in Christ is built as 
upon a rock : the fall of man, the redemption of man, and the resm*- 
rection of man, the three cardinal ai'ticles of our religion, are such as 
human ingenuity could never have invented ; therefore they m.ust 
be divine. The other argument is this : if the prophecies have 
been fulfilled (of which there is abundant demonstration), the 
Scripture must be the word of God ; and if the Scripture is the 
word of God, Christianity must be true." 

After the date of the poem we have just been considering, the 
infirmities of old age rendered him incapable of any similar efforts, 
or of any important duty ; and it is said that he sufifered himself to 
be guided by his housekeeper, 'Mxs. Hallows, whose ascendency in 
his family became the subject of ridicule, more ill-natured than 
witty, in a novel, published in 1755, called "The Card;" she being 
described under the name of Mrs. Fusby, while Young is character- 
ized by the title of Dr. Elwes. 

Concerning this pei-son, a writer in the " Gentleman's Magazine" 
informs us that she was the daughter of a rector of All-Hallov/s, 
Hertford ; and that upon the marriage of Miss Caroline Lee (the 
second daughter of Mrs. Young by her fii'st husband), she was in\dted 
by the poet, who knew her family, to his house ; that she had some 
fortune of her own, perhaps very small, as her father left a large 
number of children ; that she was advanced in yeare, and was a 
woman of piety improved by reading; and that she was always 



36 LIFE AND CHARACTER 

treated by him and by his guests, even those of the highest rank) 
with the politeness and respect due to a gentlewoman. 

In the same magazine are found several letters of Mi\ Jones, his 
curate and executor, to a friend in London, which foi-nish the infor- 
mation we now proceed to give of the closing years of his hfe. 

The fii'st beai*s date at Welwyn of July 25, 1Y62, and says: — 
" The old gentleman here seems to me to be in a pretty odd way of 
late, moping, dejected, self-willed, and as if surrounded with some 
perplexing circumstances. There is much mystery in almost all his 
temporal affairs, as well as in many of his speculative opinions. 
There is thought to be an irremovable obstruction to his happiness 
within his walls, as well as another without them : but the former is 
the more powerful and hkely to continue so. He has this day been 
trying anew to engage me to stay mth him. No lucrative views 
can tempt me to sacrifice my liberty or my health to such measm-es 
as are proposed here." 

The next extract is from a letter, dated August 28, 1762. "I 
■pvivsiielj mentioned to you that the Doctor is in many respects a 
very unhappy man. If he would be advised by some who wish him 
well, he might be happy, though his state of health is lately much 
altered for the worse." The next letter, dated January 1, 1*763, 
states that " the mismanagement, too well known, unhappily con- 
tinues, and, still more unhappily, seems to be increasing, to the grief 
of friends, and to the ridicule of others, not a few. Penuriousness 
and obstinacy are two bad things ; and a disregard to the general 
judgment and friendly wishes of the v/iser part of mankind, another. 
There seems to be no hope, so long as the ascendency is so great." 

Under date of September 4, 1764, Mr. Jones thus writes : "My 
ancient gentleman here is still full of troubles, which moves my con- 
cern, though it moves only the secret laughter of many, and some 
untoward surmises in disfavor of himself and his household. The 
loss of a very large sum of money, £200, is talked of, whereof this 
vill (village) and neighborhood are full. Some disbelieve ; others say 
it is no wonder, where about eighteen or more servants are some- 
times taken in and dismissed in the course of a year. The gentle- 
man himself is allowed by all to be more harmless and easy in his 
family than some one else, who hath too much the lead in it." 



OF EDWARD YOUNG, LL.D. SY 

In a letter of April 2d, 1 '76 5, lie communicates an account, in 
part, of his last illness : stating that he endured pains so severe as to 
require strong and frequent opiates ; that Mrs. Hallows had that 
morning sent for the son of Dr. Young to attend him in his illness ; 
that this son had in some way provoked the displeasure of his father, 
and that all social intercourse between them had been suspended ; 
that when the father was apphed to for permission to grant him an 
interview it was declined. " I heartily wish," says Mr. Jones, " the 
ancient man's heart may grow tender towards the son, though 
knowing him so well, I can scarce hope to hear such desii-able 
news." Another writer states that this alienation arose from some 
irregulai-ities of the son at college, on account of which he had been 
expelled. 

We learn, hoAvever, from Boswell that, according to Dr. Johnson, 
the cause of the quarrel between the father and son was this : — the 
latter insisted that the housekeeper should be turned away, as in his 
judgment she had acquired an undue influence over his aged father, 
and was saucy to himself. The old lady could not conceal her 
resentment against him for saying to his father that an old man 
should not resign himself to the management of anybody. 

The next letter, dated Welwyn, April 13th, 1765, beai-s the intel- 
ligence of Dr. Young's decease on the 5th. " I have now the plea- 
sure to acquaint you that the late Dr. Young, though he had 
for many yeai-s kept his son at a distance, yet has now, at last, left 
him all his possessions, after the payment of certain legacies ; so that 
the young gentleman, who bears a fair character, and behaves well, 
as far as I can hear or see, will, I hope, soon enjoy, and make a pru- 
dent use of a very handsome fortune. The father, on his death-bed, 
and since my return from London, was apphed to, in the tenderest 
manner, by one of the physicians and by another person, to admit 
the son into his presence to make submission, to ask forgiveness, and 
to obtain his blessing. As to an interview with his son, he inti- 
mated that he chose to decline it, as his spirits were then low, and 
his nerves weak. "With regard to the next particular, he said, — ' I 
heartily forgive him ;' and, upon mention of the last, he slowly lifted 
up his hand, and gently letting it fall, pronounced these words, 
*God bless him!' After about a fortnight's illness, and bearing 



38 LIFE AND CHARACTER. 

excessive pain, he expired iu tlie night of Good Friday last, the 5th 
inst., and was decently buried yesterday, about six in the afternoon, 
in the chancel of this church, close by the remains of his lady, under 
the communion table. The clergy, who are the trustees of his cha 
rity school, and one or two more, attending the funeral, the last office 
at interment being performed by me." 

In the Doctor's will, Mr. Jones was remembered, and in testimony 
of respect for the manner in which he had discharged his duties to 
the parish, a handsome legacy was bequeathed to him. Another 
legacy, to the amount of £1,000, was ordered for his housekeeper; 
a sum that was thought to be not more than what was due to one 
whom he had never degraded by paying wages. The only remain- 
ing . legacy was left to " hk friend^ Henry Stephens, a hatter at the 
Temple Gate. 

In his will, which bore the date of February, 1760, he desires of 
his executors, in a particular manner, that all his manuscript books 
and writings whatever, might be bm-ned, except his book of accounts. 
In a codicil, dated September, 1764, he made it his dying entreaty 
to his housekee]3er, " that all his manuscripts might be destroyed 
as soon as he was dead, which would greatly oblige her deceased 
friend.''^ These last injunctions were not strictly complied vnth. It 
is much to be regTetted that such injunctions were made at all. 

An inquiry is here natm-ally suggested, as to the manner in which 
Dr. Young usually disposed of his income. It has been hinted 
already that he not seldom descended to flattery of the great, with a 
view perhaps to improve his pecuniary resources ; and that his 
receipts at times were large from the productions of his pen. The 
income of the rectory, moreover, was quite considerable. It is said 
that he lived at a moderate expense, rather inchning to pai-simony 
than profusion ; and that he annually made use of httle more than 
half his income. Yet we have reason to believe that he employed 
an honorable share of it in answering the claims of humanity and 
rehg-ion, for it is the testimonj^ of Dr. Wai'ton that he was one of 
the most amiable and benevolent of men. 

" The same humihty," says a biographer, " which had marked a 
hatter and a housekeeper for his friends, had before bestowed the 
same title upon his footman, in an epitaph in Welwyn church-yard, 



OF EDWARD YOUxNTG, LL.D. 39 

I 

upon James Barker, dated 1149." This epitaph seems worthy of 'i 

insertion in this place, as it serves to ilhistrate favorably the charac- 
ter and genius of its author. ~ L 

i 
" If fond of what is rare, attend ! 
Here lies an honest man^ 

Of perfect piety, 

Of lamb-Hke patience, 

My friend, James Barker ; 

To whom I pay this mean memorial, 

For what deserves the greatest. 

An example 

Which shone through all the clouds of fortune, 

Industrious in low estate. 

The lesson and reproach of those above him, 

To lay this little stone 

Is my ambition ; 

While others rear 

The polished marbles of the great. 

Vain pomp ! 

A turf o'er virtue charms us more. 

E. Y. 1749. 

It is somewhat singular that he who could write so beautiful an 
epitaph for an humble friend and domestic, should have withheld the 
preparation of a fitting memorial of his lamented wife. We know 
not how to account for it, unless we suppose that he regarded the 
affectionate allusion to her decease, in the " Night Thoughts," a suf- 
ficient testimony of his grief, and of his remembrance of her. 

His own epitaph, and that of his wife, was 'v^iitten by his surviv- 
ing and only son, Frederick ; and inscribed upon a monument 
erected by him in Welwyn church. It reads thus : — 

M. S. 

Optimi Parentis 

Edvardi Young, LL.D 

Hujus Ecclesiae Rect. 

Et Elizabethae 

Fcem. praenob. 

Conjugis ejus amantissimae, 

Pio et gratissimo animo 



40 LIFE AKD CHARACTER 

Hoc marmor posuit 
F. Y. 

Filius superstes. 

As we read this brief and simple memorial, we are reminded of 
those impressive hnes of the gifted and eloquent poet, in whose 
interment and epitaph they are exactly verified. 

" What though we wade in wealth, or soar in fame ! 
Earth's highest station ends in ' Here he lies !' 
And 'Dust to dust' concludes her noblest song !" 

While, in the death of Edward Young, the repubhc of letters sus- 
tained no common loss, we feel disappointment and grief that it cre- 
ated apparently but a feeble sensation in the British kingdom. Dods- 
ley's Annual Register for 1165 thus records the fact and the ante- 
cedent circumstances. Age, that impairs the faculties of the ordinary 
race of men, only seemed to hght up his fii-e, and almost to the last 
his powers grew stronger. Such, however, was his fate, that towards 
the latter part of his hfe he was but little talked of ; a manifest 
instance that when any man, how great soever, resolves to forsake 
the world, the world is wilhng enough to leave him. Our celebrated 
poet might, with great truth, say of himself, that he had been so 
long remembered he ivas forgotten ; he even seemed to fall unwept 
of the Muses, and while all Grub street was in momiiing at the 
death of a much inferior genius, he passed as silent to the grave as 
piety or modesty could wish. 

It gives us pain, and almost enkindles om* indignation, that a 
man of genius and of world-vpide celebrity, as Dr. Young was, 
should have been borne to his grave in the most private manner 
possible, and with scarcely the most ordinary outward demonstra- 
tions of respect for his memory. Though he was the founder, and 
had been the munificent patron of a charity school in his own 
parish, neither master nor scholars were present at his funeral. The 
clerical trustees of the school, and but one or two other individuals 
were the only mourners visible on that occasion. It seems difficult 
to account for such shameful neglect. Either the community among 
whom he had passed more than thirty years of his Hfe must have 



OF EDWARD YOUNG, LL.D. 41 

been a very stupid one, or the decease of tlie aged and venerable 
poet must bave been studiously concealed from them. 

In presenting a general view of the character of Dr. Young, 
assisted by the brief and scattered notices of him which history has 
preserved, we may &st mention, as very prominent, that melan- 
choly disposition which is usually characteristic of poetic genius, but 
which, as in Co^vper and Henry Khke White, and others, occasion- 
ally alternated with a gay and buoyant frame of mind. The melan- 
choly temperament caused him in his sohtary walks to select the 
church-yard m preference to a more cheering scene : and also to 
prefer a sohtary to a social ramble. While he excelled in conversa- 
tion and occasionally indulged in mhth and hvely satire, he loved to 
meditate for hom's in uninterrupted solitude. Nor is this surprising 
when we discover the admhable results of those meditative hom's. 
They must have proved hom-s of the richest luxury. 

The turn of his mind (says the Annual Eegister) was naturally 
solemn ; and he usually, when at home in the country, spent many 
hours of the day walking in his own church-yard among the tombs. 
His convei-sation, his wiitings, had all a reference to the hfe after 
this ; and this turn of disposition mixed itself even with his improve- 
ments in gardening. He had, for instance, an alcove painted as if 
with a bench to repose on. Upon coming up near it, however, the 
deception was perceived, and this motto appeared : — 

" Invisibilia non decipiunt," 

the meaning of which is, — " The things unseen do not deceive us." 
Yet, notwithstanding this gloominess of temper, he was fond of inno- 
cent sports and amusements : he instituted an assembly and a bowl- 
ing green in the parish of which he was rector, and often promoted 
the gaiety of the company in person. His wit was generally 
piquant, and ever levelled at those who testified any contempt for 
decency and religion. 

His melancholy tm-n of mind is farther discovered in a passage in 
one of his earhest poems, " The Last Day," where he denominates 
his muse " The Melancholy Maid," 

" Whom dismal scenes delight, 
Frequent at tombs, and in the realms of night.'' 



42 LIFE AND CHARACTER 

But his melanclioly was so modified by science, philosopliy, and reli 
gion, that it was never ahowed to infringe upon the sober duties and 
reahties of hfe. It did not render him indifferent to the interests 
and welfare of society. He appeared among his acquaintance 
" neither as a man of sorrow," nor yet as " a fellow of infinite jest." 
We are informed that the dignity of a great and good man appeared 
in all his actions and in all his words ; that when he conversed on 
religious subjects his manner was cheerful and happj^ ; that, as in his 
writings, death, futurity, judgment, and the everlasting state were 
his common topics. His piety was neither enthusiastic nor gloomy. 
In the performance of all the public and private duties of rehgion 
he was regular and constant. 

It may aid us, perhaps, in discovering the fights and shades of 
Young's character to introduce some shrewd observations of Beattie, 
the sweet poet of Scotland. He says : — 

" When I first read Young my heart was broken to think of the 
poor man's afflictions. Afterwards I took it into my head that 
where there was so much lamentation there could not be excessive 
suffering ; and I could not help applying to him sometimes these 
fines of a song, 

" Believe me the shepherd but fayns 
He's wretched to show he has wit." 

On talking with some of Dr. Young's friends in England, I have 
since found- that my conjectures were right ; .for that while he was 
composing the " Night Thoughts" he was really as cheerful as any 
other man." 

A satisfactory explanation of this apparent incongruity we have 
found in Boswell's Life of Johnson, in the account which he fur- 
nishes of an inter\^ew had by himself and Dr. J. with the son of 
Dr. Young at the old homestead after the decease of his father. 
Boswell having observed to Mr. Young that he had been informed 
that his father was a cheerful man, the latter answered : — " Sir, he 
was too well-bred a man not to be cheerful in company, but he was 
gloomy when alone. He never was cheerful after my mother's 
death, and he had met with many disappointments." 

An instance at once of his pensive turn of mind and his cheerful- 



OF EDWARD TOTJXG, LL.D. 43 

ness of temper in society is found in a playful incident which he 
related to a friend ^yhen walking in his garden. " Here," said he, 
" I had put a handsome sun-dial with this inscription Eheu fugaces ! 
which (speaking with a smile) was sadly and promptly verified, for 
by the next morning my dial had been carried ofl?' 

In his domestic and private character he was as amiable, as in his 
religious character he was venerable. One who knew him inti- 
mately gives us this interesting account of him : — " Ilis politeness 
was such as I never saw equalled : it was invariable. To his supe- 
riors in rank, to his equals, and to his inferiors, it differed only in 
the degrees of elegance. I never heard him speak with roughness 
to his meanest servant : yet he well knew how to keep up his dig- 
nity, and, with all the majesty of superior worth, to repress the bold 
and the forward. In conversation upon hvely subjects, he had a 
brilhancy of wdt which was peculiar to himself. I know not how to 
describe it, but by saying, that it was both heightened and softened 
by the great and the amiable quahties of his soul. I have seen 
him ill and in pain, yet the serenity of his mind remained unruffled. 
I never heard a peevish expression fall from his lips ; nor was he, 
at such times, less kindly and pohtely attentive to those around 
him, than when in the comj)any of strangere, who came only to 
^dsit him for the fii-st time." 

A similar testimony is borne to him as a man and a companion, 
by Dr. Warton, who knew him well. He describes him as one of 
the most amiable and benevolent of men ; most exemplary in his 
hfe and sincere in his religion ; in conversation none said more bril- 
liant things. Lord Melcombe, who was an excellent judge of wit 
and humour, says that when Young and Voltaire ^^sited him at 
Eastbuiy, the English poet was far superior to the French in the 
variety and novelty of his hons mots and repartees. Tscharner, a 
noble foreigner, ha\dng spent four days with Dr. Young, in a letter 
to Count Haller, states that, at Welwyn, the author tastes all the 
ease and pleasure man can desne ; that everything about him shows 
the man, each indi\ddnal being placed by rule ; that all is neat, 
without art ; that he is very agreeable in conversation, and extreme- 
ly pohte. 

His well known epigram on Voltaire may here be quoted as au 



44 LIFE AND CHARACTER 

instance of Ms indulgence in the sallies of wit, though it may be 
regarded also as an example of his habitual indignation against 
indecency and irreligion. These were ever condemned in unmea- 
sured tones by his satuic muse. Voltaire, when in England, had, in 
his presence, ridiculed Milton's allegory of Sin and Death ; upon 
which Young, jealous of the reputation of his countryman, extem- 
poraneously repKed : — 

" Thou art so witty, profligate, and thin, 
Thou seem'st a Milton with his Death and Sin." 

His satires abound in similar effusions of wit and humour, directed 
against the folly of being devoted to Fashion, and of aiming to 
appear what we are not. Some selections will serve to illustrate our 
author's aptitude for creating this kind of entertainment. 

" The Court affords 
Much food for satire : it abounds in lords, 
' What lords are those saluting with a grin V 
One is just out^ and one as lately in. 
' How comes it then to pass we see preside 
On both their brows an equal share of pride V 
Pride, that impartial passion, reigns through all, 
Attends our glory, nor deserts our fall." 

Speaking of some who strive to appear gay and happy, through 
the impulses of ambition, while their real circumstances in life 
prompt far other feehngs, he says : — 

" Hence aching bosoms wear a visage gay. 
And stifled groans frequent the ball and play. 
Completely dup'd by Monteuil and grimace. 
They take their birth-day suit, Siad public face : 
Their smiles are only part of what they wear, 
Put off at night with Lady Bristol's hair. 
What bodily fatigue is half so bad ? 
With anxious care they labor to be gladP 

The low and unintellectual partiahties of some men are thus 
characterized : — • 

" The dunghill-breed of men a diamond scorn 
And feel a passion for a grain of corn : — 



OF EDWARD YOUNG, LL.D. 45 

Some stupid, plodding, money-loving wight, 

Who wins their hearts by knowing black from white, 

Who with much pains, exerting all his sense, 

Can range aright his shillings, pounds, and pence." 

Extravagant professions of love, in courtship, are thus satii'ised. 

" Phillis and her Damon met 
Eternal love exactly hits her taste : 
Phillis demands eternal love at least. 
Embracing Phillis with soft-smiling eyes, 
Eternal love I vow the swain replies : 
But say, my all^ my mistress and vay friend! 
What day next week th' eternity shall end V 

Of the fair sex he produces several sketches which abound in wit 
and humor. We have space for only two or three. 

" Lemira's sick ; make haste ; the doctor call : 
He comes ; but, where's his patient 1 at the ball. 
The doctor stares ; her woman curtsies low, 
And cries, ' My lady, sir, is always so : 
Diversions put her maladies to flight ; 
True she can't stand^ but she can dance all night. 
I've known my lady (for she loves a tune) 
For fevers take an opera in June : 
And, though perhaps you'll think the practice bold, 
A midnight park is sovereign for a cold : 
With colics breakfasts of green fruit agree ; 
With indigestions, supper just at three.' 
A strange alternative, replies Sir Hans, 
Must women have a doctor or a dance ? 
Though sick to death, abroad they safely roam. 
But droop and die, in perfect health, at home : 
For want — but not of health, are ladies ill 5 
And tickets cure beyond the doctor'' s bill.'''' 

" Fair Isabella is so fond of /ame. 
That her dear self is her eternal theme : 
Through hopes of contradiction oft she'll say 
Methinks I look so wretchedly to-day !' " 

The only apology for occupying so much space with the foregoing 
quotations is the desire to convey to those who have not read his 



46 LIFE AND CHARACTER 

Satires, a just impression of the mental constitution of Dr. Young, 
exliibitiug at difierent times, and in diiferent productions of his 
genius, the opposite traits of gaiety and melanchol}^, the hghts and 
shades of thought. He was not all gioom : nor did he always 
confine his thoughts to grave, serious, sj^iritual, eternal themes. 
When it was allowable to be gay and spi-ightly : when the topic of 
oral or written discussion permitted, none could be more gay and 
humorous ; but when he tm-ned his meditations, or employed his con- 
versational powers, or his pen, upon those themes of great and awful 
moment which are discussed in his hnmortal " Night Thoughts," 
he is not to be charged with melancholy, or enthusiasm, or misan- 
thropy, because he speaks in language of most impressive serious- 
ness, and often of thrilling pathos. He only adapts his language 
and his sentiments to the subject before him ; and those subjects, 
though not agi'eeable to the gay and thoughtless, are nevertheless 
subjects with which it is the highest interest of all to make them- 
selves famiharly and practically acquainted. His primary object in 
this Poem, as is apparent from the title, (The Complaint,) was to 
p ortray the evils of life, and of coui-se it must be allowed to employ 
strains of a sombre character. But it abounds in other pictures 
besides the dark and the sad — pictures upon which beams with 
unearthly splendor, the light introduced fi-om the upper world, so 
that we are attracted heaven-ward as a relief from the sorrows of 
Eai'th. He never so paints the advereities of this life as to justify 
discontent, or attach blame to Di\ine Providence, or engender an 
oppressive melancholy. 

As a preacher, the only anecdote recorded of him does honour to 
his conscientiousness and sensibihty ; to his just appreciation of the 
value of the truth he was presenting, and the momentous impor- 
tance of its being solemnly listened to by those who attended on 
his ministry. It is reported, that while he was discharging the 
duties of his sacred office at the Ptoyal Chapel, he found on one 
occasion, that his most strenuous endeavours to render his audience 
attentive were unavailing ; upon which, his pity for their guilt and 
folly so prevailed over the dictates of decorum, that he abruptly 
resumed his seat in the pulpit, and burst into a flood of teai-s. 

It will be seen in the Notes on Night VII., that we have been 



OF EDWARD YOUNG, LL.D. 47 

obliged to utter our dissent from some of his theological views on 
the subject of Virtue, and its rewards, and in other places to expose 
some errors into which we think he has fallen. We are happy, 
however, to admit here an apology which we have fallen in with, 
which may account for some of the erroneous statements he has 
made, and furnish ns with a convenient principle of interpretation 
which it may be useful to adopt. The apology is this : — The im- 
passioned character of poetry is very apt to lead the head into error 
of some kind. . His imagination may carry him beyond the point 
of sober truth. He is in danger of overcharging hi-s descriptions, 
and imparting a fanciful air to his sentiments. He may be tempted, 
for the sake of exciting the reader's mind by means of novelty, or 
with a view to give his hues an epigrammatic smartness to indulge 
in paradox or exaggeration. The precise shade of thought intended 
to be expressed is sometimes rendered difficult by the fetters of 
metre or of rhyme. These incidental aberrations should not be too 
harshly judged ; although there may be others of a more serious 
nature for which the heart of the writer must be responsible. 

The same writer (in the Christian Spectator) has furnished som.e 
other excellent remarks, upon the religious character of Dr. Yoimg^s 
poetry., which we will here adopt. The poet dwells less on the 
experience than the theory of religion, though there are not wanting 
in him some happy dehneations of the internal opei-ations of grace. 
The renewal of genuine piety since the time of our poet, and 
especially from the commencement of the present century, has been 
highly propitious to the production of a purely rehgious poetry ; still it 
is no small praise, that although religious poetry in the hands of the 
author of the " Night Thoughts" is not all which it might be, in d-ep 
practical and experimental views, it has notwithstanding so high a 
character for seriousness and truth, and embodies so many essential 
principles of Christianity, expressed in the liveliest imagery and 
with classical grace. It is perhaps a fault with Yormg in respect to 
the rehgion (or rather the rehgious influence) of his poetry, that 
while it impresses the mind with a general and salutary thonghtful- 
ness, it does not often create any signal alarm in the sinner's con- 
science, or exhibit the truth in such a manner as to wrench from his 
grasp the idolized objects of this world, and subdue his spirit into 



48 LIFE AND CHAKACTER 

penitence. It seems fitted rather to convince tlie speculative infidel 
of the truth of religion, and to make the serious more serious, than 
powerfully to move the feelings of irrehgious persons in respect to 
then* immortal concerns. We can easily conceive that an ungodly 
man may escape from the really important \dews and well-intended 
expostulations in the " N"ight Thoughts" with only a love of melan- 
choly or an admii-ation of genius. This effect, whenever it takes 
place, must be owing less, we think, to the author's theology, than 
to the splendor of his language and the care with which he has 
labored his periods. It is too much hke the efiect of that preaching 
which, in describing the general judgment, for instance, aims at 
brilliant language and striking figiires — gTacefaUy takes down the 
pillars of the creation, and employs our own poet's "swift arch- 
angel" who 

" With his golden wing 
As blots and clouds, that darken and disgrace 
The scene divine, sweeps stars and suns aside." 

The only notices which we can find of his habits as a student 
are very brief, yet not devoid of interest. In reading a book, when 
a passage pleased him, he was accustomed to turn do-^Ti the leaf 
that he might give those passages a second reading. Many volumes, 
it is said, had so many leaves folded down as not to admit of being 
shut. After his death they were found in this condition ; thus 
showing that human schemes are often doomed to remain but par- 
tially accomplished. 

At the table he practised great moderation ; and in. the evening, 
after a shght refreshment, he retu'ed as early as eight o'clock, even 
though he might have guests at his house, who of course would 
desire his company to a later hom\ It is said that after his first 
sleep he passed the gTeater part of the night in meditation, and in 
the composition of his works. 

He himself says, in the last book of the " Night Thoughts" — 

" These thoughts, O Night, are thine : 



From thee they came, like lovers' secret sighs, 
While others slept." 



OF EDWARD YOUNG, LL.D. 49 

When he rose from his bed, which was generally at a very early 
horn-, his thoughts were so well digested and arranged in his mind, 
that he had no more to do than to commit them to paper. 

We add that he must have cultivated the same intensity of 
thought as that which Milton, on account of his bhndness, was 
oWiged to exercise in preparing his larger poems. Every page of 
the "Night Thoughts" bears the clearest e^ddence of originating 
from a process of most elaborate and careful meditation. To this 
we may ascribe the wonderful condensation of thought which that 
poem exhibits ; those priceless gems which are scattered through it ; 
those aphoristic sentences of compressed wisdom and piety, which 
have been drawn from it and transferred widely into our popular 
hteratm*e and conversation. It not only evinces thought in the 
author, but, to understand, and appreciate, and digest what he has 
composed, the reader is required to exercise no smaU energy, and 
close apphcation, of thought. Dr. Young was pre-eminently a man 
of thought ; he was an ingenious, subtile, and powerful reasoner ; 
he possessed a luxuriant though undisciphned imagination — more 
vigorous than accm^ate ; more bold than tasteful. He was a close 
observer of men and manners, for which the best of opportunities 
had been enjoyed and not negligently improved. The workings 
of the human heart also, he often sketches with great fidelity to 
natm'e. 

But remarks of this kind may be comprehended more advanta- 
geously, in the account which is to be subjoined of the leading 
characteristics of the author's numerous productions. It will confii-m 
much of what we have said, to close om* account of him, by intro- 
ducing a few lines of respect and esteem which were addi'essed to 
him by his learned friend, Dr. Warton. 

" But tell me, oh ! what heavenly pleasure tell, 
To think so greatly, and describe so well ! 
How wast thou pleased the wondrous theme to try, 
And find the thought of man could rise so high ! 
Beyond this world the labour to pursue, 
And open all eternity to view ! 

But thou art best delighted to rehearse 
Heaven's holy dictates in exalted verse : 
3 



50 LIFE AND CHARACTER OF DR. YOUNG. 

Oh, thou hast power the harden'd heart to warm, 

To grieve, to raise, to terrify, to charm ; 

To fix the soul on God ; to teach the mind 

To know the dignity of human kind ; 

By stricter rules well-governed life to scan, 

And practise o'er the angel in the man." 



A CRITICAL ESTIMATE OF THE WORKS OF DR. YOUNG. 



Under this head it is our pui'pose, not so much to offer criticisms 
of our own, as to present to our readers, generally in a condensed 
form, those criticisms which we have found in various authors, hear- 
ing upon this subject ; including those of Dr. Johnson, in his Life 
of Young. 

The writings of Dr. Young comprise Essays, Plays, and Poems. 
As an essayist, his Centaur not Fabulous^ and his Conjectures on 
Original Composition are his chief productions. Of the former, 
it is thought, that although its general tendency is favourable to re- 
ligion and morality, the pictures it exhibits of the life in vogue are 
often overcharged, and the diction, though sometimes animated and 
energetic, is commonly inflated and affected, or harsh and severe. 
Of the other work, though the style is considered as vitiated by 
affectation, and the mode of expression as being sometimes hyperboli- 
cal, the sentiments frequently are bold, original, penetrating, brilliant, 
and sublime. It was addressed, in the form of a letter in 1Y59, to 
Richardson, the author of Clarissa ; and though he modestly ex- 
presses in that letter his despair of breaking through the frozen 
obstructions of age, and care's incumbent cloud, into that flow of 
thought and brightness of expression, which subjects so polite re- 
quire, yet has it justly been pronounced to be more like the produc- 
tion of untamed, unbridled youth, than of jaded fourscore. In 
justification of this opinion may be quoted as a specimen, the fol- 
lowing animated passage : — 



52 A CRITICAL ESTIMATE OF 

" If there is a famine of invention in tlie land, we must travel, 
like Joseph's brethren, far for food : we mnst visit the remote and 
rich ancients. But an inventi^•e genius may safely stay at home ; 
that, like the widow's cruse, is divinely replenished from within, and 
affords us a miraculous delight. Why should it seem altogether 
impossible that Heaven's latest editions of the human mind may be 
the most correct and fine ? Jonson was very learned, as Samson 
was veiy strong, to his own hurt. Bhnd to the natm-e of tragedy, 
he pulled do^n all antiquity on his head, and buried himself under 
it." 

The chief design of this Letter on Composition was, as aheady 
stated in the Memoir, to do justice to the exemplary death-bed of 
Addison, and to erect a monumental marble to the memoiy of an 
old fi-iend. Being an original author himself. Young therein re- 
proaches Pope with being content with the honor of merely trans- 
lating the Ihad of Homer, instead of aspiring to the glory of giving 
a second Homer to England. He censm-es Pope for his fall from Ho- 
mer's numbers, free as air, lofty and harmonious as the spheres, into 
childish shackles and tinkhng sounds ; also for putting Achilles into 
petticoats a second time. The Enghsh Homer only a few weeks 
before his death (in 1*744) is said to have talked over an epic plan 
with the writer. 

As a dramatist, he has not been successful in animating the 
beauties of art, with the energies of natural fii-e and spiiit. He is 
superior to his contemporaries, Rowe and Congreve, in strength and 
warmth of conception ; but inferior to them in eloquence and neat- 
ness of diction, beauty of cadence, correctness, chasteness, and regu- 
laiity. None of his di'amas, except the " Revenge," have been 
adopted by the stage. While they are animated, brilliant, and 
classical ; while they paint, in glowing language, the fuiy of rage 
and revenge, and the agonies of jealousy, love, and despair ; it must 
be confessed that they abound in puerile rant and conceit, and are 
not without specimens of fustian and bombast. His three plays arc 
distinguished by a similar catastrophe — that of suicide, a method 
by which, as Dryden remarked, a poet easily rids his scene of persons 
whom he wants not to keep ahve. 

" Of Young's poems," says Dr. Johnson, " it is difficult to give 



WORKS OF DR. YOUNG. 53 

any general character ; for he has no uniformity of manner ; one of 
his pieces has no great resemblance to another. He began to write 
early, and continued long; and at different times had different 
modes of poetic excellence in view. His numbers are sometimes 
smooth, and sometimes rugged ; his style is sometimes concatenated 
and sometimes abrupt ; sometimes difi'usive and sometimes concise. 
His plan seems to have started into his mind at the present moment ; 
and his thoughts appear the effect of chance, sometimes adverse and 
sometimes lucky, with very little operation of judgment. He was 
not one of those wi-iters whom experience improves, and who, ob- 
serving their own faults, become gradually correct. His poem on 
the ' Last Day,' his first great performance, has an equability and 
propriety which he afterwards either never endeavoured or never 
attained. Many paragraphs are noble, and few are mean ; yet the 
whole is languid : the plan is too much extended, and a succession 
of images divides and weakens the general impression." 

As a poet, his writings exhibit more fancy than judgment ; more 
originahty and invention, than correctness of taste and variety and 
extent of knowledge. He possessed, as Addison says of Lee, true 
poetic fire, yet clouded and obscured by thick volumes of smoke. 
But he possesses merit of the highest grade. Though an unequal, 
he is eminently an original writer ; so much so, that the instances 
are very rare in which can be discovered a single line or expression 
borrowed from any other Enghsh writer. His defects and beauties 
are alike his own. Of the epigrammatic style of his satires there is 
no example : nor was he indebted to any poet, ancient or modern, 
for the plan of his " Night Thoughts." 

In lyric compositions he did not excel. The general character 
of his versification is that of harshness and ruggedness, yet many 
passages may be adduced as beautiful exceptions. He pubhshed a 
short essay upon the structure and models of lyric poetry which 
abounds in original and just observations ; in the commencement 
of which he says : — " How imperfect soever my own composition 
may be, yet am I willing to speak a word or two of the nature of 
lyric poetry ; to show that I have, at least, some idea of perfection 
in that kind of poem in which I am engaged ; and that I do not 
think myself poet enough entirely to rely on inspiration for my sue- 



54 A CRITICAL ESTIMATE OP 

cess in it. He that has an idea of perfection in the work he under- 
takes may fail in it; he that has not, must : and yet he will be vain^ 
for every little degree of beauty, how short or miproper soever, will 
be looked on fondly by him, because it is more than he promised 
himself." Hence our author infers that the poetic class are more 
obnoxious to vanity than others, from which emanates that great 
sensibihty of disrespect, that quick resentment which justly marks 
them out for the " genus irritabile" among manldnd. 

Of his earher productions, the Last Day, Vanquished Love, and 
Paraphrase on Job, have deservedly obtained the greatest popu- 
larity. They have all their brighter passages ; particularly the Last 
Day, and the Paraphi-ase. But many hues are stiff and incorrect. 
The author m liis too great care to fabricate the ornaments of wit 
and thus to please the fancy, often sacrifices a more important object, 
that of reaching and moulding the heart. 

His Universal Passion (or Satires) was pubhshed before the 
appearance of Pope's satirical epistles ; and has therefore the merit 
of gi^^LUg the lead to that kind of writing. It contains much appro- 
priate satire, good vei-se, and laughable humour. 

In the foregoing Memoir of the author some specimens of the 
satires are introduced, fi'om which their general character may be 
discovered. They have, says one, the fault of Seneca, of Ovid, of 
Cowley; a profusion and an unseasonable application of vnt. A 
lover of originality, he did not stud}^ or regard models. Had he 
endeavoured to imitate Juvenal and Pei-sius, this fault would have 
been avoided. Those great mastei*s, it is further said, were too 
much engrossed by the importance of their subjects, to fall into the 
puerility of v»itticism. But here, in defence of Dr. Young, it may 
be rephed, that in depicting the foibles, and foUies, and absurdities 
of human character and conduct, his witticisms for the most part 
seem not to be at all out of place. It is true that they may be 
wanting in dignity, and stateliness, and gravity ; but so are the 
things he satirizes. It is a good rule of rhetoric that the style be 
suited to the subject : and it was Dr. Young's opinion, as we learn 
from the preface to those satires, that to smile at ^dce and folly and 
tui-n them into ridicule, as it gives them the greatest offence, is to 
be preferred to other treatment of them. He asserts, moreover. 



THE WORKS OF DR. YOUNG. 55 

that laughing satire bids the fairest for success. The world is too 
proud to be fond of a serious tutor ; and when the author is in a 
passion, the laugh generally, as in conversation, turns against him. 
Of this dehcate satire, he adds, Horace is the best master : he ap- 
pears in good humour while he censures ; and therefore his censure 
has the more weight, as supposed to proceed from judgment, not 
from passion. Juvenal, on the other hand, is ever in a passion ; he 
has little valuable except his eloquence and morality ; the last of 
which (says our author) I have had in my eye, but rather for emu- 
lation than imitation, through my whole work. 

The remarks of Dr. Aikin, which we subjoin, upon the production 
now under re\dew, seem to be discriminating, just, and candid. 

Like all other theorists on the mind, who aim at simplicity in their 
explanation of the varieties of human character, he has laid more 
stress upon his fundamental principle (love of fame) than it wiU pro- 
perly bear ; and in many of the portraits .which he draws, the love of 
fame can scarcely be recognized as a leading feature. In reahty, 
Young was a writer of much more fancy than judgTnent. He paints 
with a brilliant touch and strong colouring, but with little attention 
to natm*e ; and his satires are rather exercises of wit and invention 
than grave exposures of human folhes and vices. He, indeed, runs 
through the ordinary catalogue of fashionable excesses, but in such 
a style of whimsical exaggeration that his examples have the au' of 
mere creatures of the imagination. His pieces are, however, enter- 
taining, and are marked with the stamp of original genius. Having 
but less egotism than those of Pope, they have a less splenetic an* ; 
and the author's aim seems to be so much more to show his wit 
than to indulge his rancour, that his severest strokes give httle 
pain. 

It has been observed that Young's satires are strings of epigi-ams. 
His sketches of charactei-s are generally terminated by a point, and 
many of his couplets might be received as proverbial maxims or 
sentences. A common figure of speech with him is the antithesis^ 
where two members of a sentence, apparently in opposition to each 
other, are connected by a subtile turn in the sense. Thus, 

" A shameless looman is the worst of men. 
Because she's ri^ht she's ever in the ivron^J^ 



66 A CRITICAL ESTIMATE OF 

With vnt, or the association of distant ideas by some unexpected 
resemblance, he abounds. Ahnost every page affords instances of 
his inventive powers in this respect ; som.e, truly beautiful ; othei*s, 
odd and quaint. For example : — 

" Like cats in air-pumps, to subsist we strive 
On joys too thin to keep the soul alive." 

There is httle of the majestic or dignified in Young's satires : not 
that he was incapable of subhmity, but because the \iew he took 
of men and manners generally excluded it. His second satire is on 
Women ; for his politeness did not prevent him fi'om employing the 
lash vdih even peculiar force on the tender sex. They will feel 
themselves, however, little hurt by these attacks, for his ridicule con- 
sists in presenting a series of caricatures, drawn rather from fancy than 
observation ; and he does not treat the whole sex with that contempt 
which is perpetually breaking out in the writings of Pope and Swift. 

Dr. Young, in his preface to the " Love of Fame," has made 
some observations on the use of satire as a means of refoiTaation, 
which desei-ve a place here, — 

" It is possible that satire may not do much good ; men may rise 
in their affections to theh folhes, as they do to their friends, wlieii 
they are abused by others. It is much to be feared that misconduct 
will never be chased out of the world by satire ; all therefore that 
is to be said for it is, that misconduct will certainly never be chased 
out of the world by satire, if no sathes are written ; nor is that 
term unapplicable to graver compositions. Ethics, heathen and 
chiistian, and the Scriptures themselves, are in a gi-eat measure a 
satire on the weakness and iniquity of men ; and some part of that 
satire is in verse too ; nay, in the first ages, philosophy and poetry 
were the same thing : wisdom wore no other dress, so that I hope 
these satires will be the more easily pardoned that misfortune by 
the severe. If they hke not the fashion, let them take them by the 
weight ; for some weight they have, or the author has failed in his 
aim. Nay, historians themselves may be considered as satirists, and 
sathists most severe ; since such are most human actions, that to 
relate is to expose them. 

It is somewhat surprising that none of the distino'uished critics 



THE WORKS OF DR. YOUNG. SY 

from whom we have quoted, animadvert upon one marked feature 
of these satires, which must offend every person of refined education 
and religious culture : it is the grossness and vulgarity to which the 
author occasionally descends. In this respect the satires were better 
suited to the taste of the degenerate period in which they were 
written than to our own, which has been improved by the influences 
of a more spiritual and thorough Christianity than was then incul- 
cated. They are too conformed to the style of compositions that 
sprung up under the corrupting auspices of the court of Charles II., 
and seem indeed to have been designed by our author to gratify 
most a class of people that were familiar with the loose moralities 
and indehcate vocabulary of a court : and hence the reading of the 
satires may, on the whole, with much profit be dispensed with, espe- 
cially by persons of immature minds. 

It is proper to say, not in justification of the author's mtroduc- 
ing such expressions as we here censure, but in explanation of his 
being led into the use of them, that unfortunately he had sought 
and acquired a very famxiliar acquaintance with men of courtly habits 
and of courtly vices : that he was familiar with such men as Pope, 
and Swift, and others who indulged freely in such ideas and expres- 
sions in their published writings. And lest the censure here pro- 
nounced upon certain limited portions of these satires should preju- 
dice any mind against the " Night Thoughts," it is proper to add 
that the former production was written some years before the latter ; 
it was wi'itten before the author entered upon the sacred^ office, and 
before he had felt the salutary influence of deep affliction in causing 
him to chasten his mind and heart before the doctrines of the Cross. 
The " Night Thoughts" are of a very different order of composition 
from the sathes, being entirely free from the taint of gi'ossness and 
vulgarity which characterize some of the expressions and allusions 
which we have felt it our duty to expose, as found in the earlier pro- 
duction. 

The following general observations on Dr. Young's poetry are 
from the pen of Dr. Johnson : — 

"It must be allowed of Young's poetry, that it abounds in 
thought, but without much accui-acy of selection. When he 
lays hold of an illustration, he pursues it beyond expectation, some- 
s' 



58 A CRITICAL ESTIMATE OP 

times happily, as in his parallel of quicksilver vfiih. pleasure, -^^hich 
I have heard repeated with approbation by a lady of whose praise 
he would have been justly proud, and what is very ingenious, very 
subtile, and almost exact ; but sometimes he is less lucky, as when, 
in his ' Night Thoughts,' having it di-opped into his mind that the 
orbs, floating in space, might be called the dust of creation, he thinks 
of a cluster of gTapes, and says, that they all hang on the great \ine, 
di-inking the 'nectareous juice of immortal life.' The parallel ad- 
verted to above runs as follows : — 

" ' Pleasures are few, and fewer we enjoy ; 
Pleasure, like quicksilver, is bright and coy; 
We strive to grasp it with our utmost skill, 
Still it eludes us, and it glitters still : 
If seized at last, conipute your naighty gains ; 
What is it, but rank poison in your veins V 

" His conceits are sometimes quite valueless. In the ' Last Day,' 
he hopes to illustrate the re-assembling of the atoms that compose 
the himian body at the ' trump of doom,' by the collection of bees 
]nto a swarm at the tinkhng of a pan. 

" The prophet says of Tyi-e, that ' her merchants are princes.' 
Young says of Tj're in his ' Merchant,' 

' Her merchants princes, and each deck a throne.' 

Let burlesque try to go beyond him. He has the trick of joining 
the turgid and familiar : to buy the alhance of Britain, ' climes 
were paid down.' Antithesis is his favorite : ' they for kindness 
hate :' and, ' because she's right, she's ever in the wrong.' 

" His versification is his own. Neither his blank nor his rhyming 
lines have any resemblance to those of former writers. He picks up 
no hemistichs, he copies no favourite expressions. He seems to 
have laid up no stores of thought or of diction, but to owe all to the 
fortuitous suggestions of the present moment : yet I have reason to 
beheve that when he had formed a new design, he then laboured it 
with very patient industry ; and that he composed with great labom*, 
and frequent revisions. His verses are formed by no certain model. 
He is no more Hke himself in his dilFerent productions than he is 



THE WORKS OF DR. YOUNG. 59 

like others. He seems never to have studied prosody, nor to have 
had any direction but from his own ear : but with all his defects, he 
was a man of genius and a poet. 

The Night Thoughts. 

About the yeai* 1 '741, it pleased Divine Providence to deprive Dr. 
Young, within a short period, of his wife, and of the son and 
daughter whom she had by her fii'st husband. For these Dr. 
Young manifests as tender a regard as if they had been his own off- 
spring. Meeting with these great domestic losses in such rapid succes- 
sion, at a tolerably advanced period of hfe (being nearly sixty years 
old), disgusted with the world, and deprived so suddenly of all his 
tenderest social attractions, it was then, as a French writer remarks, 
that he may in a sense be said to have descended alive into the 
tomb of his friends, and to have buried himself with them ; and, 
drawing the curtain between the world and himself he no more 
sought consolation except in the future world, and his genius, far 
from being idle or mute under his affliction, seemed to wait for these 
three strokes of lightning to dart itself forward into the sombre em- 
phe of death and to penetrate even to the happy regions of which 
it is the passage. 

For the " Night Thoughts," — a species of composition v/hich he 
may be said to have created ; a mass of the grandest and richest 
poetry which human genius has ever produced, he has received 
unbounded applause. It is to this work, begun when 

" He long had buried what gives life to live, 
Firmness of nerve, and energy of thought, " 

that he deserves, and will continue to deserve his reputation. He 
appears to have been sensible of its peculiar merit, since he denomi- 
nated his writings when collected, " The Works of the Author of the 
Night Thoughts P It may not improperly be considered as a good 
poetical contrast to Thomson's " Seasons ;" the one delighting as much 
to exhibit the gloomy, as the other the cheerful face of things. In 
the article of sublimity, it may vie with "Paradise Lost" itself; 
though in every other hteraiy respect almost, it would be absurd to 



60 A CRITICAL ESTIMATE OF 

attempt a comparison between them. The beauties of the " Night 
Thouo'hts" are numerous, and its blemishes are not few. 

Among its distinguishing excellencies, are the spirit of subhme piety 
and sti'ict morality which animates the whole ; dignity of thought 
and language, bold and hvely descriptions, proper and well-sup- 
ported similes, and striking repetitions, or breaks in the expression. 

Among its principal faults, ai-e, the unnecessary repetition of the 
same ideas and images, redundancy of metaphor, extravagant ideas 
and expressions, crowded and ill-chosen epithets, allusions di-awn out 
beyond then- proper bounds, a puerile play on words, the use 
of inelegant images or terms, and negligence of the harmony 
of versiJfication. Yet with all its faults, it hresistibly seizes the 
mind of the reader, ai-rests his attention, and powerfully inter- 
ests him in the midnight soitows of the plaintive bard. It has a 
merit which no production, except one of real genius, ever possesses : 
with scarce any facts or incidents to awaken cmiosity, it speaks to 
the heart thi'ough the medium of the imagination. 

No ordinary genius was requh-ed to communicate any poetical 
interest to a poem on such a plan, and of such a class of subjects. 
Yet this is one of the few poems on which the broad stamp of popu- 
larity has been prominently impressed. Editions have been multi- 
phed from eveiy press in the country. It is to be seen on the shelf 
of the cottager, with the Family Bible and the Pilgiim's Progi-ess ; 
and it ranks among the fii'st and favourite materials of the poetical 
hbraiy. What is more remarkable, is, that the French are fond of 
Young, though they cannot understand either Milton or Shakspeare. 
It is said that Napoleon was pailicularly gratified with the " Night 
Thoughts" and Ossian. 

Young is, in fact, more of the orator than of the poet ; but his 
oratory is still of a chai-acter distinct from the eloquence of prose. 
The " Night Thoughts" please us much in the same manner as we 
are captivated by the wonders of fiction, only, in this poem, the 
vastness, the gi-andem*, the novelty consist, not in strange or roman- 
tic incidents, but in the unexpected turns and adventurous sallies, 
the dazzling pomp of metaphor, the infinite succession of combina- 
tions and intersections of thought, the stratagems of expression, 
which occur throughout this long poetical homily ; so that, forbid- 



THE WORKS OF DR. YOUNG. 61 

ding as tlie subject is from its severity, he has continued to enliven 
it with all the graces of wit, chastened by the majesty of truth. 
Add to this, there is a charm in that stern and pensive melancholy 
which is the character of the " Night Thoughts ;" a sentimental 
charm which hangs about moonlight graves, and whispering night 
winds, and funereal cypress, in which those persons especially love to 
indulge, who have known no deeper wounds of sensibihty thai, 
those of fictitious griefs or philosophical pensiveness. 

In this poem there is a luxuriance of faults as well as of beauties. 
Johnson terms it " a wilderness of thought." The perpetual enigma 
of the style at length wearies ; the antitheses pall upon us ; we even 
gi'ow fatigued with admiration. The faults of Young are, however, 
the faults of genius, and they are amply redeemed by the splendor 
that is thrown around them. It is not, perhaps, pecuhar to Young's 
poetry that very young and very old persons are the most partial to 
the " Night Thoughts :" the reason of this may be found in the 
progress of taste. It pleases the more before the taste has attained 
the period of refined cultivation, because we are then less sensible 
of the defects of his style, and are most susceptible of that indistinct 
feehng of awe which the Gothic gloom of his poetry is adapted to 
excite. It pleases us as age advances on account of the sympathetic 
'views of life which make the poetry of Young seem to an old man 
doubly natural. The author had passed his sixtieth year when he 
pubhshed the First ISTight ; and there is, it must be owned, some- 
thing of the querulousness, as v/ell as the sageness of age, in the 
general strain of his sentiments. But his long complaint terminates, 
as it should do, in consolation ; and the Ninth Night is the one, 
which, next to the first three, is the most generally read and the 
most frequently adverted to. 

It may be profitable as well as interesting here to introduce part 
of a sketch from the Edinburgh Review, of that school of English 
poetry to which Dr. Young belonged, and which differed so essen- 
tially from that of the preceding centmy. The Restoration (of 
Charles 11.), says the author of this sketch, Lord Jeffrey, brought in 
a French taste upon us, and what was called a classical and a pohte 
taste ; and the wings of our Enghsh muses were chpped and trim- 
med, and their flights regulated at the expense of all that was pecu- 



62 A CRITICAL ESTIMATE OF 

liar, and mucli of what was brightest in their beauty. The king 
and his com-tiers durino; their long; exile, had of course imbibed the 
taste of their protectors ; and, coming from the gay court of France, 
\\4th something of that additional profligacy that belonged to their 
outcast and adventurer character, were likely enough to be revolted 
by the very excellencies of our native Hterature. The grand and 
subhme tone of our greater poets appeared to them dull, morose, 
and gloomy ; and the fine play of then* rich and unrestrained fancy, 
mere childishness and folly : while their frequent lapses and perpe- 
tual irregularity were set down as clear indications of barbarity and 
ignorance. At this particular moment too in England, the best of 
its recent models labored under the reproach of repubhcanism ; and 
the courtiers were not only disposed to see all its peculiarities with 
an eye of scorn and aversion, but had even a good deal to say in 
favor of that very opposite style to which they had been habituated. 
It was a witty, and a grand, and a splendid style. It showed more 
scholarship and art, than the luxuriant negligence of the old Enghsh 
school ; and was not only free from many of its hazards, and some 
of its faults, but possessed merits of its own, of a character more 
likely to please those who had then the power of conferring celebrity, 
or condemning to derision. Then it was a style which it was pecu- 
liarly easy to justify by argument ; and in support of which great 
authorities, as well as imposing names, were always ready to be pro- 
duced. It came npon us with the air and the pretension of being 
the style of cultivated Em-ope, and a true copy of the style of 
polished antiquity. 

Compared with the former style of Enghsh poets, this new conti- 
nental one was more worldly and more townish ; holding more of 
reason, and ridicule and authority ; more elaborate and more assum- 
ing ; addressed more to the judgment than to the feehngs ; and some- 
what ostentatiously accommodated to the habits, or supposed habits, 
of persons in frishionable life. Instead of tenderness and fancy, we 
had satire and sophistry ; artificial declamation, in place of the 
spontaneous animations of genius ; and, for the universal language 
of Shakespeare, the personahties, the party pohtics, and the brutal 
obscenities of Dryden. Of this continental style, Addison was the 
consummation ; and if it had not been redeemed about the same 



THE WOKKS OF DR. YOUNa. 63 

time by the fine talents of Pope, would probably bave so far dis- 
credited it, as to have brought us back to our original faith half a 
century before. Pope has incomparably more spirit, and taste, and 
animation ; but Pope is a satirist, and a moralist, and a wit, and a 
critic, and a fine writer, much more than he is a poet. He has all 
the dehcacies and proprieties and felicities of diction ; but he has 
not a great deal of fancy, and scarcely ever touches any of the 
greater passions. He is much the best, we think, of the classical 
continental school ; but he is not to be compared with the mastere, 
nor with the pupils, of that Old Enghsh one from which there had 
been so lamentable an apostacy. There are no pictures of nature 
or of simple emotion in all his wiitings. He is the poet of town 
hfe, and of high hfe, and of literary life ; and seems so much afraid 
of incurring ridicule by the display of natm-al feehng or unregu- 
lated fancy, that it is difficult not to imagine that he thought such 
ridicule could have been very well directed. 

With the wits of Queen Anne this foreign school attained the 
summit of its reputation ; and has ever since, we think, been de- 
chning, though by slow and imperceptible gradations. Thomson 
was the fii-st writer of any eminence who receded from it, and made 
some steps back to the force and animation of our original poetry. 
Young exhibits, in om* judgment, a curious combination, or contrast 
rather, of the two steps of which we have been speaking. Though 
incapable either of tenderness or of passion, he had a richness and 
activity of fancy that belonged rather to the days of James and 
Elizabeth, than to those of George and Anne : but then, instead of 
indulging it, as the older writers would have done, in easy and 
playful inventions, in splendid desciiptions, or glowing illustrations, 
he is led by the restraints and established taste of his age to work 
it up into strained and fantastical epigrams, or into cold and revolt- 
ing hyperboles. Instead of letting it flow gracefully on, in an easy 
and sparkling cm'rent, he perpetually forces it out in jets, or makes 
it stagnate in formal canals ; and thinking it necessary to wi-ite hke 
Pope, when the bent of his genius led him rather to copy what was 
best in Cowley and most fantastic in Shakespeare, he has produced 
something which has produced wonder instead of admiration, and is 
felt by every one to be at once ingenious, incong-ruous, and unnatm-al. 



64 A CRITICAL ESTIMATE OF 

But to proceed no fiu-ther with this instructive and illustrative 
sketch of English poetry, and to confine oui-selves more particu- 
larly to the consideration of the Night Thoughts, it would be easy 
to select a long series of specimens of pathetic and subhme com- 
position. But, as has been coiTectly observed, amid the profusion 
of beautiful passages that may be cited, the description of Conscience 
from her secret stand noting down the folhes of a bacchanahan so- 
ciety (n., 262, (fcc.) ; the epitaph upon the departed world; the 
issuing of Satan from his dungeon on the Day of Judgment ; all 
these are distinguished by great strength and boldness of invention, 
and rise in many parts to the teriible and sublime. The simile of 
the traveller, with wliich The Consolation opens, is highly pleasing, 
striking, and beautiful. 

" As when a traveller, a long day past 
In painful search of what he cannot find 
At night's approach, content \^dth the next cot, 
There ruminates, awhile, his labor lost : 
Then cheers his heart with what his fate affords. 
And chants his sonnet to deceive the time, 
Till the due season calls him to repose : 
Thus I, long travell'd in the ways of men, 
And dancing with the rest, the giddy maze, 
Where disappointment smiles at hope's career ; 
Warn'd by the languor of life's evening ray. 
At length have housed me in an humble shed ; 
Where, future wandering banish'd from my thought, 
And waiting, patient, the sweet hour of rest, 
I chase the moments with a serious song. 
Song soothes our pains ; and age has pains to soothe." 

Dr. Young's account of the nature and faculties of an immortal 
soul, of different natures marvellously mixed, clogged by the finite 
and peiishable materials of its house of clay, is profound, striking, 
comprehensive, and, what in him is rare, closely consecutive. His 
arguments in favor of infinite duration in a future state, though not 
in all cases logically conclusive, are beautifrilly poetic. 

" O ye blest scenes of permanent delight, — 
Could ye so rich in rapture fear an end, 
That ghastly thought would drink up all your joy 
And quite unparadise the realms of light !" 



THE WORKS OF DR. YOUNG. 65 

" Amongst our poets," says a talented English writer, " those 
who display the greatest power of mind, are Milton, Pope, and 
Young. Had Young possessed the reqw'^ite of taste, he would 
perhaps have rivalled even Milton in power ; but such is his choice 
of images and words, that by fi*equent and sudden introduction of 
heterogeneous and inferior ideas, he nullifies what would otherwise 
be subhme, and, by breaking the chain of associations, strikes out, as 
it were, the key-stone of the arch. ISTor is this all : the ponderous 
magnitude of his images, heaped together without room for adjust- 
ment in the mind, resembles rather the accumulation of loose masses 
of uncemented gi-anite, than the majestic mountain, of which each 
separate portion helps to constitute a mighty whole. Still we must 
acknowledge of this immortal poet, that his path was in the heavens, 
and that his soul was suited to the celestial sphere in which it 
seemed to hve and expand as in its native element. We can feel 
no doubt that his own conceptions were magnificent as the stars 
among-st which his spirit wandered, and had his mode of conveying 
these conceptions to the minds of othere been equal to their own 
original sublimity, he would have stood pre-eminent amongst our 
poets in the region of power. 

" After all, it is not so much in extended passages, as in distinct 
thoughts, and single expressions, that we feel and acknowledge the 
power of this dignified and majestic wiiter. ' Silence and darkness ! 
solemn sisters' is a striking illustration of how great an extent of 
sublimity may be embodied in a few simple and well-chosen words ; 
and it is unquestionably to beauties of this description that Young 
is indebted for his high rank amongst the English poets." 

Perhaps enough has been said in the way of criticism and illus- 
tration ; but, nevertheless, it seems desirable to add some observa- 
tions of Dr. Aikin, the well-known editor of some of the older 
British poets. They are here added, because, in the main, they 
have om* cordial assent ; but those which refer to the theological 
aspects and rehgious tendencies of the poem we cannot but regard as 
in a great measure unfounded. It is certain that some of its theo- 
logical statements and reflections vnll not please the man of the 
world, because he cannot appreciate the higher doctrines and facts 
of evangelical rehgion : they will be considered gloomy, unsocial, 



66 A CRITICAL ESTIMATE OF 

perhaps also incredible. But the difficulty in sncli a case is not 
chargeable to the error of the poet, but to the disquahfication of the 
reader. We beheve it to be so in the present instance. Dr. Aikin 
was evidently a better critic in the hterature than in the theology 
of Young. 

With these prehminary statements and quahfications, wliich seem 
to be called for in all fairness, we copy the excellent observations of 
the writer referred to : and the rather, as they embody his views of 
the history of this remarkable poem — the process by which it was 
wrought out — or the cii'cumstances that gave it some of its promi- 
nent characteristics. 

" Dr. Young was a man of warm feelings, ambitious both of fame 
and advancement. He set out in life upon an eager pursuit of what 
is chiefly valued by men of the world ; attached himself to patrons, 
some of them such as moral delicacy would have shunned, and was 
not sparing in adulation. His rewards, however, were much inferior 
to his expectations : he lived, as he himself says, ' to be so long 
remembered, that he was forgot,' and he was obliged to bury his 
chagrin in a country parsonage. He also met with domestic losses 
of the most affecting kind, and he possessed little vigor of mind to 
bear up under misfortune. In this state he sat doivn to write his 
' Complaint' (for that is the other title of the Night Thoughts) at a 
time when he was haunted with ' the ghosts of his departed joys,' 
and every past pleasure ' pained him to the heart.' His first object 
therefore, is to dress the world in the colours of that ' night' through 
which he surveyed it ; to paint it as a scene 

Where's naught substantial but our misery ; 
Where joy (if joy) but heightens our distress. 

In his progress he endeavours to pluck up by the roots every com- 
fort proceeding from worldly hopes or human philosophy, and to 
humble the soul to the dust by a sense of its own vileness, and the 
vanity of everything terrestrial. This prepares the way for the ad- 
ministration of the grand and sole remedy for the evils of life — the 
hope of immortahty as presented in the Christian revelation. His 
\iew of this scheme is of the most awful kind. He conceives a 
wrathful and avenging God, on the point of dooming all his offend- 



THE WORKS OP DR. YOUNG. 67 

ing, that is all his rational, creatures to eternal destruction, but di- 
verted from his purpose by the ransom paid in the sujflferings and 
death of his Son. I do not take upon me to pronounce concerning 
the soundness of his theology ; but so deep is the power it spreads 
over his whole poem, that, in effect, it overpowers the light of his 
consolations. There is a kind of captious austerity in all his reason- 
ings concerning the things of this world, that charges with guilt 
and folly every attempt to be happy in it. Every circumstance is 
dwelt upon that can image life as vain and miserable ; and lest any 
gladsome note should cheer the transitory scene, he perpetually 
sounds in the ears the knell of death. Such a picture of this world 
I am sure, is ill calculated to inspire love for its Creator ; and I 
think it as httle fitted to foster the mutual charities of life, and put 
men in good humour with each other. What a contrast to the 
amiable theology of the Seasons !" 

" N'o writer, perhaps, ever equalled Young in the strength and 
brilhancy which he imparts to those sentiments which are funda- 
mental to his design. He presents them in every possible shape 
enforces them by every imaginable argument, sometimes compresses 
them into a maxim, sometimes expands them into a sentence of 
rhetoric, sets them off by contrast, and illustrates them by simiH- 
tude." 

" It has already been observed, in speaking of his satires, how 
much he abounds in antithesis. This work is quite overrun with 
them ; they often occupy several successive Hues ; and while 
some strike with the force of hghtning, others idly gleam like 
a meteor. It is the same with his other figures : some are 
almost unrivalled in sublimity; many are to be admired for 
their novelty and ingenuity ; many are amusing only by their ex- 
travagance. It was the author's aim to say everything wittily : no 
wonder, therefore, that he has often strayed into the paths of false 
wit. It is one of his characteristics to run a thought quite out of 
breath ; so that what was striking at the commencement is rendered 
flat and tiresome by amplification. Indeed without this talent of 
amplifying he could never have produced a work of the length of 
the Night Thoughts from so small a stock of fundamental ideas." 

" I cannot foresee how far the vivacity of his style, and the fre- 



68 A CRITICAL ESTIMATE OF 

quent recurrence of novel and striking conceptions, will lead you on 
through a performance which, I believe, appeai-s tedious to most 
readers before they arrive at the termination. Some of the earlier 
books will afford you a complete specimen of his manner and f oi-nish 
you with some of his finest passages. You -mil, doubtless, not stop 
short of the third book, entitled " Narcissa," the theme of which 
he characterises as 

Soft, modest, melancholy, female, fair. 

It will show you the author's powers in the pathetic, where the 
topic called them forth to the fullest exertion ; and you will probably 
find that he has mingled too much fancy and playfulness \^dth his 
grief, to render it highly afiecting." 

" The versification of Yomig is entirely modelled by his style of 
writing. That being pomted, sententious, and broken into short 
detached clauses, his lines almost constantly are terminated ■with a 
pause in the sense, so as to preclude all the vaiied and lengthened 
melody of which blank verse is capable. Taken singly, however, 
they are generally free from harshness, and sometimes are eminently 
musical." 

Thus far, and in the main excellently, writes this discrimin- 
ating and able critic. It will aid the reader to form a more just 
estimate of the poem in some particulars, to adduce, in contrast, 
the sentiment of a late eminent clergyman and instructor of om* 
own land, the Rev. Joseph Emerson, of Connecticut, whose theolo- 
gical education and attainments had qualified him to judge more 
accm-ately than Dr. Aikin, upon the religious tendencies and utihties 
of the poem. These sentiments were expressed in one of those 
famihar but able lectures which he was accustomed to dehver to 
select audiences at his Seminary and elsewhere, upon several of the 
English poets. Those lectures were partly extempore and partly 
wTitten, and were accompanied with the reading of the Poem in 
couree to his audiences. From his written notes, in lecturing upon 
the Night Thoughts, the following sentences have been given to the 
world in his memoir : — 

" Young : — To this gi-eat and venerable bard, I can say. Hail 
thou dear companion of my early youth ; most faithful counsellor 



THE WORKS OF DR. YOUNG. 69 

of my advancing days ; precious, invaluable friend, for more tlian 
twenty, more than thirty summers ripening by my side ; balm of 
my sorrows ; pillow of my weary, throbbing head ; sweetener of my 
sweetest joys. Some have considered him too dark, too dismal, too 
gloomy. Dark and dismal, indeed, are many of his pictures ; but, 
I think, not more so than their originals. If so, we should not 
blame the painter, but the subjects. But even granting that the 
darkness of his grief has added some shades of horror to his por- 
traits ; his redeeming pictures are most glorious. What other pencil 
has given us such paintings of the cross ? of the beauties of Im- 
manuel, and the glories of salvation ? 

" To me, the ' Night Thoughts' is a poem, on the whole, most 
animating and delightful ; amazingly energetic ; full of the richest 
instruction ; improving to the mind ; much of it worthy of being 
committed to memory ; possessing some faults — some passages unfit 
to be read — obscure — extravagant — tinged occasionally with flattery." 

Having thus presented both sides of the question as to the theolo- 
gical excellencies and defects of the " Night Thoughts," we may 
remark, that it becomes an inquiry of great interest, what influence 
this remarkable poem has actually exerted over the intellect, the 
conscience, the sensibilities, the moral tastes, the conduct, and the 
destiny, of its numerous readers and admirers ? Bearing upon this 
inquiry, we have found a passage in Dr. Cheever's Review of tfie 
Life and Correspondence of John Foster, which has greatly inter- 
ested us : he says : — 

" Young's ' Night Thoughts' occupied a conspicuous place among 
the books which attracted Foster's early notice, and under the influ- 
ence of which the characteristics of his mind were much formed and 
developed. The strain of gloomy and profound sublimity which 
distinguishes the poem suited perfectly the original bent of his in- 
tellect, the character of his imagination, and his tendencies of feel- 
ing, so that it wrought upon him with a powerful effect. It even 
had much to do with the moulding of his style, as well as the sus- 
taining and enriching of his native sublimity of sentiment. Almost 
all Foster's pages are tinged with the sombre, thoughtful grandem' 
of the night-watcher ; they reflect the lonely magnificence of mid- 
night and the stars. And there are images in Young which describe 



70 A CRITICAL ESTIMATE OF DR. YOUNG's WORFS. 

tHe tenor of Foster's meditative life, occupied, so mucli of it, with 
intense contemplations on the futm'e life, in pacing to and fro upon 
the beach of that immortal sea, which brought us hither. For no 
one ever saw him but he seemed to 

" Walk thoughtful on the solemn, silent shore 
Of that vast ocean we must sail so soon." 

His love and admiration of Young's Night Thoughts he earned 
with him through life." 

On the whole, (as one correctly observes,) this work has produced 
a deep impression, has served to mould opinions, tastes, and charac- 
ter. It is read with equal interest by all classes. The old read it 
for its sober \iews of hfe, the young for its poetry. Christians love 
it for its truth ; persons indiflferent to rehgion are gained by the 
ajffectionate warmth of its appeals to then* self-interest. All perhaps 
adixiire it for its pathos and its pensiveness. The love of melan- 
choly, so deeply seated in many minds, also accounts for no small 
part of its fascinations. 



THE COMPLAINT, 



NIGHT I 



ON LIFE, DEATH, AND IMMORTALITY. 



SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE OF COMMONS. 



Tired Nature's sweet restorer, balmy Sleep ! 
V He, like tlie world, his ready visit pays 
■ Where Fortune smiles ; the ^vi-etched he forsakes : 
Swift on his downy pinions flies from woe, 
And hghts on lids unsullied with a tear. 

Fi'om short (as usual) and distm-b'd repose 
I wake : how happy they who wake no more ! 
Yet that were vain, if dreams infest the grave. 

1. Sleep : An example of the figure called personification. It is repre- 
sented as an animated being^ — as a god of downy pinions — in the bestowment 
of his favour discriminating between the sons of affluence and of poverty. 
Compare Night IX. 2176—86. 

7. 1 wake : This expression suggested to the poet an impressive contrast — 
" how happy they who wake no moreP The poem abounds in striking, and 
often ingenious, contrasts ; and to this feature it owes much of its liveliness, 
impressiveness, and power. 
4 



74 THE COMPLAINT. 

I wake, emerging from a sea of dreams 

Tumultuous ; where my wreck'd desponding tliouglit 10 

From wave to wave of fancied misery 

At random drove, her helm of reason lost ; 

Though now restored, 'tis only change of pain, 

(A hitter change !) severer for severe. 

The day too short for my distress ; and night, 15 

E'en in the zenith of her dark domain, 

Is sunshine to the colour of my fate. 

THE REIGN OF NIGHT. 

JSTight, sahle goddess ! from her ebon throne, 
In rayless majesty, now stretches forth 

Her leaden sceptre o'er a slumb'ring world. 20 

Silence how dead ! and darkness how profound ! 
Nor eye nor list'ning ear an object finds ; 
, Creation sleeps. 'Tis as the gen'ral pulse 
Of life stood still, and Nature made a pause ; 
An awful pause ! prophetic of her end. 25 

And let her prophecy be soon fulfiU'd : 
Fate ! drop the curtain ; I can lose no more. 

13. Restored : That is, the helm of reason, upon the souFs awaking out of 
sleep. 

16. Zenith : central portion ; the zenith being that point of the celestial 
concave which is directly over the head of the spectator. The strength, or 
rather the extravagance of the author's expressions cannot escape notice. 
He describes his fate as not only more dark than midnight ; but as so much 
darker than midnight as midnight is darker than the blaze of sunshine. 

18. Sable goddess : Night is here personified ; described as a sable goddess, 
seated upon an ebon throne and stretching her leaden sceptre over a slum- 
bering world. The imagery is beautifully expressive. The whole passage 
displays to great advantage the imagination of the poet. The epithet sable 
is taken from the name of a small animal that possesses exceedingly valu- 
able fur which is dark and glossy. Ebon., black, from ebony, a valuable 
wood of dark colour. Her sceptre is appropriately denominated a leaden one^ 
conveying the idea of her exerting a dull, oppressive influence over her sub- 
iects. 



NIGHT I. 76 

Silence and Darkness ! solemn sisters ! twins 
From ancient Night, who nurse the tender thought 
To reason, and on reason build resolve, 30 

(That column of true majesty in man) 
Assist me : I will thank you in the grave ; 
The grave, your kingdom. There this frame shall fall 
A victim sacred to your dreary shrine. 
But what are ye ? 35 

ADDRESS TO THE AUTHOR OF LIGHT. 

Thou, who didst put to flight 
Primeval Silence, when the morning stars, 
Exulting, shouted o'er the rising ball ;' ~ 
O Thou, whose word from solid darkness struck 
That spark, the sun ; strike wisdom from my soul ; 40 

28. Silence and Darkness : A beautiful appeal is made to these imaginary- 
personages for assistance, who are here poetically represented as sisters, the 
children of ancient Night, which existed before the alternation of Night and 
Day in the historic period of our earth. They are described as nursing the 
tender thought to reason, or as leading us from incipient thoughts on any sub- 
ject to a connected train of thought — to conclusions. It is their office also to 
build resolve on reason, that is, superadd to the conclusions of reasoning the 
strong determination of the will, " that column of true majesty in man." 
There is some incongruity in the figurative language of this passage, which 
it may be rhetorically useful to point out. Silence and darkness are repre- 
sented, beautifully and appropriately, as the nurses of thought, maturing into 
conclusions : but when the author speaks of their building resolve upon 
reason, &c., he unwisely and unhappily changes the figure, and introduces a 
confused image. They are now converted into architects, and the child they 
were nursing has become the pedestal of a column. 
,^,^^1. Morning stars: A reference to the sublime description of the creation 
in'the book of Job, 38 : 7 — " when the morning stars sang together,' and all the 
sons of God shouted for joy." The " sons of God" and " the morning stars," 
according to the parallelism in Hebrew poetry, denote the same objects, and 
these are the angels of God. The epithet morning stars is remarkably ap- 
propriate, alluding to the brilliant star which, during a part of the year, 
adorns the morning sky — the planet Venus. In Rev. 22 : 16, the Redeemer 
calls himself " the bright and morning star. 

40. Strike wisdom, &c. : An expression borrowed from the process of 
striking sparks of fire with flint upon steel. 



"76 THE COMPLAINT. 

My sonl, whicli flies to thee, her trust, her treasiu'e, 
As misei-s to then* gold, while others rest. 

Through this opaque of nature and of soul, 
This double night, transmit one pitying ray. 
To hghten and to cheer. Oh, lead my mind 45 

(A mind that fain would wander from its woe), 
Lead it through various scenes of hfe and death, 
And from each scene the noblest truths inspire. 
ISTor less insphe my conduct than my song ; 
Teach my best reason, reason ; my best will 60 

Teach rectitude ; and fix my firm resolve 
Wisdom to wed, and pay her long arrear : 
Nor let the phial of thy vengeance, pour'd 
On this devoted head, be poui*'d in vain. 

MY DEPARTED HOURS. 

The bell strikes one. We take no note of time 55 

But from its loss : to give it then a tongue 
Is wise in man. As if an angel spoke, 
I feel the solemn sound. If heard aright. 
It is the knell of my departed hours. 
Where are they ? With the years beyond the flood. GO 

43. This opaque^ &c. : This darkness of nature (at night) and of my own 
soul. 

46. Fain: gladly. 

50. Teach, &c. : Teach my best reason that which is reasonable ; cause 
the best actings of my intellectual powers to be more strictly conformed to 
what is reasonable, true, and fit. 

52. Pay her long arrear: Pay what I have long owed her: that is, pur- 
sue a wise course in future, and not that which I have done heretofore. 

53. Vengeance : Displeasure. Reference is made to domestic afflictions 
which are afterwards fully detailed. 

56. To give it then a tongue : To cause Time to speak to us. 

59. Knell : The clock, as it strikes, may be regarded as warning us of 
departed hours, just as the tolling church bell admonishes us of departed 
friends. It is also a signal (61) of important business to be speedily accom- 
plished. 



NIGHT I. 



11 



Vp ;^^ It is the signal that demands despatch : 
" How much is to be done ! My hopes and feai-s 

Start up aiarm'd, and o'er hfe's narrow verge 

Look down — on what ? A fathomless abyss ; 

A dread eternity ! how surely mine ! 65 

And can eternity belong to m^ 
I Poor pensioner on the bounties of an hour ? 

CONTRASTS IN MAN. 

How poor, how rich, how abject, how august, 
How complicate, how wonderful is man ! 

How passing wonder HE who made him such ! '70 

Who centred in our make such strange extremes ! 
From diff'rent natures, marvellously mix'd. 
Connection exquisite of distant worlds ! 
Distinguish'd hnk in being's endless chain ! 
Midway from nothing to the Deity ! ^ V5 

A beam ethereal, sullied and absorpt ! 
Though sullied and dishonour'd, still divine ! 
Dim miniature of greatness absolute ! 
An heir of glory ! a frail child of dust ! 

Helpless immortal ! insect infinite ! 80 

A worm ! a god ! — I tremble at myself. 
And in myself am lost. At home, a stranger. 
Thought wanders up and down, surprised, aghast. 
And wond'ring at her own. How reason reels ! 
O what a miracle to man is man, 85 

Triumphantly distress'd ! what joy ! what dread ! 
Alternately transported and aiarm'd ! 
What can preserve my hfe ? or what destroy ? 

68. How poor, hoxo rich, &c. : This passage is remarkable for the opposite 
lights in which man is presented, and displays to great advantage the au- 
thor's fondness for bringing out contrasts. The reader will notice the follow- 
ing — -poor, rich; abject, august ; from nothing to the Deity : miniature of great' 
ncss absolute ; heir of glory, child of dust ; insect infinite : a worm, a god / ^c. 

84. Her own : Her own properties, condition, and prospects. 



78 THE COMPLAINT. 

An angel's arm can't snatcli me from the grave ; 

Legions of angels can't confine me there. / 90 

NIGHT PROCLAIMS THE SOUL IMMORTAL. 

'Tis past conjecture : all thmgs rise in proof. 
"While o'er my hmbs sleep's soft dominion spreads, 
What though my soul fantastic measures trod 
O'er fairy fields, or mourn'd along the gloom 
Of pathless woods, or, down the craggy steep 95 

Hurl'd headlong, swam with pain the mantled pool, 
Or scaled the chtF, or danced on hollow ^Ndnds 
With antic shapes, wild natives of the brain ? 
Her ceaseless flight, tho' devious, speaks her natm*e 
Of subtler essence than the trodden clod, 100 

Active, aerial, towering, unconfined, 
Unfetter'd with her gTOSs companion's fall. 
E'en silent night proclaims my soul immortal : 
E'en silent night proclaims eternal day. 

For human weal Heav'n husbands all events : 105 

Dull sleep instructs, nor sport vain dreams in vain. 

THE BURIED LIVE. 

WTiy then their loss deplore that are not lost ? 
Why wanders wretched thought their tombs around 
In infidel distress ? Ai-e angels there ? 
Slumbers, raked up in dust, ethereal fire ? 110 

They five, they greatly five a hfe on earth 

96. Mantled : Expanded, spread out, as a mantle. 

102. Fall : The fall of the body into ?i state of inaction and of abject slug- 
gishness. 

105. Husbands all events : Directs skilfully, or makes useful all events. 
Even sleep, and fantastic dreams, are not without their moral use. 

110. Slumbers^ raked up^ ho.. : Does ethereal fire (the soul) slumber, cov- 
ered up in dust; in the dust of the body it once occupied? 

111. They greatly live, &c. : They, in an emphatic sense, live a life which 
on earth was un kindled, unconceived : their life is of a far superior order to 
what they passed or conceived on earth. Instead, therefore, of being proper 



NIGHT I. 79 

Unkindled, unconceived ; and from an eye 
Of tenderness let heav'nly pity fall 
On me, more justly number'd witli the dead. 
This is tlie desert, this the sohtude : 115 

How populous, how vital is the gi^ave ! 
This is creation's melancholy vault. 
The vale funereal, the sad cj^press gloom, 
The land of apparitions, empty shades ! 
/ All, all on earth is shadow, all beyond 120 

Is substance ; the reverse is folly's creed : 
How solid all where change shall be no more ! 

THIS LIFE, ONLY THE COMMENCEMENT OF BEING. 

This is the bud of being, the dim dawn, 
The twilight of our day, the vestibule. 

objects of pity, they let fall upon us, inhabitants of this world, the tear of 
pity, and more justly may denominate us the dead, than be regarded them- 
selves as the dead. The thought is an ingenious and striking one. 

115, This is the desert^ he. : This (scene of human life) is the desert, &c. ; 
another striking thought. We are accustomed to speak of the grave as a 
solitude., a desert ; but, says our author, this is a mistake. The grave is more 
populous, more vital (full of that which had enjoyed life)^ than the earth's 
surface. The dead are more numerous than the living. In another place, 
Young says : — " Where is the dust which has not been alive ?" 

118. Sad cypress gloom: The branches of the cypress awaken feelings of 
sadness from association, as they were anciently borne in funereal processions, 
and in the East, to this day, the evergreen cypress forms an appropriate or- 
nament of the grave-yard. 

123. Bud of being: The author employs a great variety of figures to con- 
vey forcibly the idea that in this life we have scarcely begun to live ; that 
our principal career lies beyond the present scene of things. This is com- 
pared to a bud^ or flower yet unexpanded : next, to the dim dawn, or early 
twilight, which is followed by a long and brilliant day ; next, to the vestibule 
of a theatre — the porch, or entrance chamber. The theatre itself is repre- 
sented as being yet shut, and its doors are opened only to the strong arm of 
death. When this takes place we shall then witness those scenes which are 
more worthy of the name of life than the present state exhibits. 

The author, to impress the same thought, metaphorically denominates us, 
in the present state, mere embnjos of existence — beings not yet fully formed 
to enjoy or to possess existence. 



80 THE COMPLAINT. 

Life's theatre as yet is shut, and Death, 125 

Strong Death, alone can heave the massy bar, 

This gi'oss impediment of clay remove. 

And make ns embiyos of existence free. 

From real life, but httle more remote 

Is he, not yet a candidate for light, 130 

The future embryo, slumb'i'ing in his sire. 

Embiyos we must be till we bm-st the shell, 

Yon ambient azure shell, and spring to hfe, 

The life of Gods (0 transport !) and of man. 

THE BURIAL OF CELESTIAL HOPES. 

Yet man, fool man, here bmies all his thoughts ; 135 

Inters celestial hopes without one sigh : 
Piis'ner of earth, and pent beneath the moon. 
Here pinions all his wishes, wing'd by Heav'n 
To fly at infinite, and reach it there. 

Where seraphs gather immortality, 140 

On hfe's fair tree, fast by the throne of God. 
What golden joys ambrosial clust'ring glow 

133. Yon ambient azure shell : The blue sky. 

134. The life of gods : The life of angels. The author very frequently in 
this poem, uses the term gods in this subordinate sense ; sometimes also to 
denote men in the heavenly state, (Night IV. 496) from the immense ad- 
vancement which they shall have there attained in all that ennobles our 
nature and renders it happy. Thus in Kight III., 432-7. 

" A good man and an angel ! these between 
How thin the barrier ! what divides their fate ? 
Perhaps a moment, or perhaps a year ; 
Or if an age it is a moment still ; 
A moment, or eternity's forgot. 
Then be what once they uere who now a/re gods." 

138. Here pinions all his wishes, &c. : Here binds the wings of all his 
wishes. Our wishes are represented as furnished with wings capable of 
bearing us upward to infinite (to infinity), that is, to enjoyments immeasur- 
ably superior to those found on earth. But man, fool man, confines his . 
wishes to the low and inferior objects of earth. 

142. Golden joys ambrosial : Rich, mellow fruits, of fragrant odour, and 
yielding the highest joys. 



NIGHT I. 81 

In his full beam, and ripen for the just, 

Where momentary ages are no more ! 

"Where Time, and Pain, and Chance, and Death expire ! 145 

And is it in the flight of threescore years 

To push eternity from human thought, 

And smother souls immortal in the dust ? 

A soul immortal, spending all her fires, 

Wasting her strength in strenuous idleness, 150 

Thrown into tumult, raptm-ed or alarm'd 

At aught this scene can threaten or indulge, 

Resembles ocean into tempest wrought, 

To waft a feather, or to disown a fly. 

Where falls this censure ? It o'erwhelms myself. 155 

How was ray heart incrusted by the world ! 
O how self-fetter'd was my grov'ling soul ! 
How, hke a w^orm, was I wrapt round and round 
In silken thought, which reptile Fancy spun. 
Till darken'd reason lay quite clouded o'er 160 

With soft conceit of endless comfort here, 
Nor yet put forth her wings to reach the skies ! 

144. Momentary ages : The ages of earth are hiit moments when com- 
pared with immortality. 

153. Resembles ocean^ &c. : What can be more expressive of the absurdity 
of human conduct than this original simile ! It embraces somewhat of the 
ludicrous, in order to convey the severer censure. 

108. Like a worm^ &c. : A silkworm. The figure, though appropriate, is 
carried out perhaps to an extent beyond what good taste approves. It will 
be better understood from an account of the habits of this animal. The silk- 
worm (says Brande), in its caterpillar state, which maybe considered as the 
first stage of its existence, after acquiring its full growth (about three inches 
in length), proceeds to enclose itself in an oval-shaped ball or cocoon, which 
is formed by an exceedingly slender and long filament of fine, yellow silk, 
emitted from the stomach of the insect preparatory to its assuming the shape 
of the chrysalis or moth. In this latter stage, after emancipating itself from 
its silken prison, it seeks its mate, which has undergone a similar transform- 
ation ; and in two or three days afterwards, the female having deposited her 
eggs (from 300 to 500 in number) , both insects terminate their existence. 

4* 



82 THE COMPLAINT. 



WAKING DREAMS FATAL. 



Night visions may befriend (as sung above :) 
Our waking di-eams are fatal. How I di'eamt 
Of things impossible ! (could sleep do more ?) 165 

Of joys perpetual in perpetual change ! 
Of stable pleasures on the tossing wave I 
Eternal sunsliine in the storms of hfe ! 
How richly were my noontide trances hung 
With gorgeous tapestries of pictured joys ! 170 

Joy behind joy, in endless perspective ! 
Till at Death's toll, whose restless iron tongue 
Calls daily for his millions at a meal, 
Starting I woke, and found myself undone. 
Where now my frenzy's pompous furniture? 175 

The cobwebb'd cottage, with its ragged wall 
Of mould'ring mud, is royalty to me ! 
The spider's most attenuated thread 
Is cord, is cable, to man's tender tie 
On earthly bliss ; it breaks at every breeze. 180 

PERPETUITY ESSENTIAL TO BLISS. 

O ye blest scenes of permanent dehght 1 
Full above measure ! lasting beyond bound ! 
A perpetuity of bHss is bhss. 
Could you, so rich in rapture, fear an end, 

170. Tapestries : Hangings of wool and silk, often interlaid with gold and 
silver, and adorned with figures of men, aninaals, landscapes, &c. 

173. Millions at a meal, &c. : Death is represented in this passage as a hun- 
gry, insatiate, and gigantic nnonster. An allusion is made, perhaps, to the 
fabled Polyphemus of Homer's Odyssey, who, like a beast of prey, devoured 
in his cave several of the companions of Ulysses. 

181. Ye blest scenes : Those of immortality, here contrasted with earthly 
scenes, and their vast superiority shown. 

184. Fear an end : The word end should receive, in reading, a strong em- 
phasis that the full meaning of the passage may be reached. 



NIGHT I. 83 

That ghastly thought would drink up all youi- joy, 185 

And quite unparadise the reahns of hght. 

Safe are you lodged above these rollmg spheres ; 

The baleful influence of whose g'iddy dance 

Sheds sad vicissitude on all beneath. 

Here teems with revolutions every horn-, 190 

And rarely for the better ;or the best, 

More mortal than the common bhths of Fate. 

Each moment has its sickle, emulous 

Of Time's enormous sithe, whose ample sweep 

Strikes empires from the root : each moment plays 195 

186. Unparadise the realms of light : Thoi is, destroy their pecuHar at- 
tractiveness, and their power to satisfy the cravings of the soul. 

188. Baleful influence : Allusion is here niade to the exploded astrological 
notion that the sun, moon, planets, and stars, in certain positions at the time 
of one's birth, exert a deleterious influence over his earthly destiny. Great 
prominence is given to the absurd doctrines of astrology in Milton's Paradise 
Lost, Book X., 656—663 :— 

" To the blank moon 
Her office they prescribed ; to the other five 
Then- planetary motions and aspects 
In sextile, square, and trine, and opposite 
Of noxious efficacy ; and when to join 
In synod VMberdgn ; and taught the fixed 
Their influence, malignant^ &c." 

Absurd as this doctrine, of determining men's fates by the relative position 
of the heavenly bodies, may appear to us, it was held among all the ancient 
nations, and has continued even to the present day in some countries. 
" Only a short period has elapsed," says Dr. Thomas Dick, " since the 
princes and legislators of Europe were directed in the most important con- 
cerns of the state by the predictions of astrologers. In the time of Queen 
Catharine de Medicis, astrology was so much in vogue, that nothing, how- 
ever trifling, was to be done without consulting the stars." 

190. Here^ &c. : On this earth every hour teems with revolutions. 

191. Or the bcst^ &c. : The best revolutions, or changes, are more mortal^ 
more short-lived than common events (common births of fate) . 

193. Each moment^ &c. : A beautiful parallel is run in this passage be- 
tween each moment with its sickle^ and Time with its enormous sithe ; the 
one operating fatally upon the sweet comforts of domestic life, the other in 
its ampler sweep laying empires in the dust. The personification of moment 
and time is admirably sustained. 



84 THE COMPLAINT. 

His little weapon in the nan-ower sphere 
Of sweet domestic comfort and cuts down 
The faii-est bloom of sublunary bliss. 

Bliss ! sublunary bliss ! — proud words, and vain ! 
Implicit treason to divine decree ! 200 

A bold invasion of the rights of Heav'n ! 
I clasp'd the phantoms, and I found them air. 
had I weigh'd it ere my fond embrace ! 
What darts of agony had miss'd my heart ! 

DOMESTIC GRIEFS. 

Death ! great proprietor of all ! 'tis thine 205 

To tread out empne, and to quench the stai-s. 
The sun himself by thy permission shines, 
And, one day, thou shalt pluck him from his sphere. 
Amidst such mighty plunder, why exhaust 
Thy partial quiver on a mark so mean ? ^\ ^IQ 

Why thy peculiar rancour wi'eak'd on me ? * J^ 

j Insatiate archer ! could not one suffice? •%, " ■ 

1 Thy shaft flew thrice, and thrice my peace was slain ; 
I And thrice, ere thrice yon moon had fill'd her horn. 

205. Great proprietor^ &c. : The universal reign of death, extending to em- 
pires, to the solar system, and the stars, as well as to individual members of 
the human family, is exhibited in a style equally sublime and pathetic. 

208. From his sphere : This phraseology is conformed, not to the real slate 
of things, but to that exploded system of astxonomy according to which 
the heavenly bodies were each placed in an immense crystalline hollow 
firm globe or sphere perfectly transparent, which revolved and carried 
around the heavenly body that was set in it. The term sphere is sometimes 
applied to the orbit in which such a body moves ; the course it describes. 

210. Partial quiver, &c. : Why expend your arrows so disproportionately 
upon me ; more copiously than upon other men ? 

214. Ere thrice yon moon^ &c. : Ere three lunar months had elapsed. The 
author here refers to the death of three beloved relatives, which occurred 
in rapid succession, though not within so short a period as, with a sort of 
poetic license, under the influence of grief, the author here represents the 
case. These relatives were his wife ; her daughter by a former husband, 
bearing in the poem the name of Narcissa ; and, probably, the brother of 



NIGHT 1. 85 

Cyntliia ! why so pale ? dost thou lament 215 

Thy wi-etched neighbour ? gTieve to see thy \Yheel 

Of ceaseless change oiitwhiii'd m human life ! 

How wanes my borrow'd bhss ! from Fortime's smile, 

Precarious courtesy ! not vu-tue's sm-e, 

Self-given, solar ray of sound dehght. 220 

THE PAST CONTRASTED WITH THE PRESENT. 

In ev'ry varied postm-e, place, and horn*, 

Narcissa, an officer in the army, who is thought by sonae to have been de- 
scribed under the name of Philander. According to one account these all died 
in ] 741, which comports with the language of this passage : but according 
to that found in Johnson's Lives of the Poets. Mrs. Temple died in 1736, 
Mr. Temple in 1740 (supposed to be referred to under the name of Philan- 
der) , and Mrs. Young in 1741. To these individuals there will be occasion 
soon to refer again. 

It may be remarked that this last account renders it necessary to suppose 
an enormous poetic license in the use of such language as 

" And thrice ere thrice yon moon had filled her horn." 
The repetition of this emphatic word four times in two lines deserves 
remark as an instance of our author's aiming at effect, and here, at the ex- 
pense of historical truthfulness, if the last account is reliable. The objection 
to refer Philander to Mr. Temple is, that in Night III. that person is de- 
scribed as dying just before Narcissa ; but we may regard this anachronism 
as a matter of poetic license. 

;215. Cynthia : The address to the moon (which received the name of 
Cynthia from the Latin poets) , is equally ingenious and pathetic. The 
author greatly admired this luminary, and frequently poured out to her liis 
emotions of tender regard, as at the beginning of the Third Night. 

216. Neighbour: The poet himself 

218-20. How wanes^ &c. : The term here used is more appropriate than 
any other, from its allusion to the diminishing visible surface of the moon in 
the last two quarters of each revolution around the earth. The lines that 
follow are quite obscure, but their meaning may be expressed thus : — How 
the bliss diminishes which I borrowed from Fortune's smile (a courtesy of 
uncertain and brief duration), not from Virtue's sun, self-given, solar ray of 
sound delight ! The smile of Fortune is precarious, depending on contingen- 
cies : Virtue sends out, like the swn, a sure ray., proceeding /rom itself., an un- 
changing source of bliss. 



86 THE COMPLAINT. 

How widow'd ev'ry thought of ev'ry joy ! 

Thought, busy thought ! too busy for my peace ! 

Through the dark postern of time long elapsed, 

Led softly, by the stillness of the night, 225 

Led, like a murderer, (and such it proves !) 

Strays (wi'etched rover !) o'er the pleasing past : 

In quest of wretchedness perversely strays. 

And finds all desert now ; and meets the ghosts 

Of my departed joys, a num'rous train! 230 

I rue the riches of my former fate ; 

Sweet Comfort's blasted clustei-s I lament ; 

I tremble at the blessings once so dear, 

And ev'ry pleasm*e pains me to the heart. 

Yet why complain ? or why complain for one ? 235 

Hangs out the sun his lustre but for me, 
The single man ? are angels all beside ? 
I mourn for millions ; 'tis the common lot : 
In this shape or in that has Fate entail'd 

222. Widowed: Stripped. 

224. Postern of time : Back door or gate of time. Allusion is made to a 
small private door in the rear wall of a castle or fortification, the passage to 
which was usually narrow and dark. 

229. Ghosts of my departed joys : The bare recollections of them. 

231. /rMC, &c. : I regret the riches of my former condition^ ere these 
sad bereavements were encountered. 

232. Comfort^ blasted dusters : A beautiful allusion to a fruitful grape 
vine prematurely injured by the frost. 

237. ./2re angels all beside ? Are none of the human race mortal but my- 
self; are they angels removed beyond the reach of sorrow ? 

239. Has Fate entailed : The primary idea expressed by the word Fate 
being false, it should not have been used by a Christian poet. The best 
apology that can be made for him, is to suppose that he uses it as a brief ex- 
pression of the same import as Divine Providence. According to many 
heathen Philosophers, fate, or destiny, was a secret and invisible power, or 
virtue, which with incomprehensible wisdom regulated all those occurrences 
of this world which to human eyes appear irregular and fortuitous. The 
Stoics, on the other hand, understood by destiny a certain concatenation of 
things, which from all eternity follow each other of absolute necessity, 



NIGHT I. 



SI 



The mother's throes on all of woman born, 240 

Not more the children than sure heii*s of pain. 



EVILS THAT BESIEGE MANKIND. 

War, Famine, Pest, Volcano, Storm, and Fu-e, 
Intestine broils. Oppression, with her heart 
Wrapt np in triple brass, besiege mankind. 
God's image, disinherited of day, 245 

Here, plunged in mines, forgets a sun was made ; 
There, beings, deathless as theii' haughty lord. 
Are hammer'd to the galling oar for hfe ; 
And plough the winter's wave and reap despair. 
Some for hard masters, broken under arms, 250 

In battle lopp'd away with half their hmbs, 
Beg bitter bread through realms their valour saved, 
If so the tyrant or his minion doom. 
Want and incurable disease, (feU pair !) 

On hopeless multitudes remorseless seize 255 

At once, and make a refuge of the grave. 
How groaning hospitals eject their dead ! 
What numbers groan for sad admission there ! 
What numbers, once in Fortune's lap high-fed, 
Sohcit the cold hand of charity ! 260 

To shock us more, sohcit it in vain ! 

tbere being no power able to interrupt their connexion. To this invisible 
power even the gods were compelled to succumb. See Brande's Dictionary. 

246. Forgets a sun was made : He has been so long engaged under ground 
in mining operations, without coming up to the light, that he forgets the 
existence of the sun : of course he foregoes the pleasures and advantages of 
his delightful beams. It is said, that in some of the deep mines in Englanili 
rooms are constructed for the accommodation of families ; and that children 
are there born, and arrive at maturity, w^ithout ever seeing the wonders and 
beauties of the world above ground. 

2-50. Broken under arms, ^c. : Injured in military service, with half their 
limbs lopp'd away in battle. Other editions place a comma after away., 
which obscures the sense, unless we give an unauthorized meaning to the 
word before it. 



88 THE COMPLAINT. 

Ye silken sons of Pleasure ! since in pains 

You rue more modish \Tsits, ^dsit here, 

And breathe from yom- debauch ; give, and reduce 

Surfeit's dominion o'er you. But so great 265 

Your impudence, you blush at what is right. 

DISEASE AND DEATH ARE UNDISCRIMINATING. 

Happy ! did soitow seize on such alone : 
Not prudence can defend, or virtue save ; 
Disease invades the chastest temperance. 
And punishment the guiltless; and alarm, 270 

Through thickest shades, pm'sues the fond of peace. 
Man's caution often into danger tm-ns, 
And, his guard falling, crushes him to death. 
Not happiness herself makes good her name ; 
Om* very wishes give us not om- wish. 275 

How distant oft the thing we doat on most 
From that for which we doat, felicity ! 
The smoothest course of Nature has its pains, 
And truest friends, thi'ough error, wound om- rest. 
"Without misfortune what calamities ! 280 

And what hostihties without a foe ! 

262-3. Since in pains you rue, &c. : Since, in a state of pain, (engendered 
by disease) you lament more fashionable visits — visits to places of dissipa- 
tion, more fashionable and more common than the visits to a hospital here 
recommended. Visit ho-c: visit the groaning hospitals (257). 

264. Give, and reduce, &c. : Spend seme of your money upon the needy 
objects you will find in the hospital ; and thus have less to spend upon 
yourself in excessive sensual gratifications. 

267. Such alone : The sons of pleasure (262) . 

270. The guiltless : That is, those comparatively so. 

273. His guard : That structure which had been erected for a defence. 

275. Our very wishes, &c. : That is, our very wishes, even when the ob- 
jects w^ere attained, have not given us the felicity which we anticipated. 

280-1. Without misfortune^ &c. : That is, although we should be exempt 
from signal adversities, yet there are calamities to be encountered ; and 
though we have no open foe, we meet with events hostile to our peace and 
welfare. 



NIGHT I. 89 

ISTor are foes wanting to tlic best on earth. 

But endless is the hst of human ills, 

And sighs might sooner fail than cause to sig^Ii. 

THE MAP OF EARTH, A TRUE MAP OF MAN. 

A part how small of the terraqueous globe 285 

Is tenanted by man ! the rest a waste, 
Eocks, deserts, frozen seas, and burning sands ! 
Wild haunts of monsters, poisons, stings, and death. 
Such is earth's melancholy map ! but far 
More sad ! this earth is a true map of man : 290 

So bounded are its haughty lord's delights 
To woe's wide empire, where deep troubles toss. 
Loud sorrows howl, envenom'd passions bite, 
Eav'nous calamities our vitals seize. 
And thi'eat'ning Fate wide opens to devom'. 295 

HUMAN HAPPINESS EVANESCENT. 

What then am I, who sorrow for myself? 
In age, in infancy, from others' aid 
Is all our hope ; to teach us to be kind — 
That Nature's first, last lesson to mankind : 
The selfish heart deserves the pain it feels : 300 

More gen'rous sorrow, while it sinks, exalts ; 
And conscious virtue mitigates the pang. 
Nor vhtue more than prudence bids me give 
Swoln thought a second channel ; who divide, 
They weaken, too, the torrent of their grief. 305 

284. Than cause to sigh : Should fail. 

295. Fate : Death, or the grave. 

301. While it sinks, exalts : While it sinks our spirits, exalts our character, 
improves our feelings. 

303-4, Bids me give sivoln thought a second channel : That is, bids me 
make known my excessive griefs to others, and thus create another channel 
by which they may pass off. Thought, or emotion, is spoken of under the 
figure of a torrent which, when swollen, or raised by immense rains, is re- 
duced by being conducted into a second channel. 



90 THE COMPLAINT. 

Take, then, world ! thy much indebted tear ; 

How sad a sight is hiiraan happiness 

To those whose thought can pierce beyond an houi* ! 

thou ! whate'er thou art, whose heart exults ! 

Would thou I should congratulate thy fate ? 310 

1 know thou wouldst ; thy pride demands it from me. 
Let thy pride pardon what thy natm-e needs. 

The salutary censure of a friend. 

Thou happy wi'etch ! by bhndness thou art blest ; 

By dotage dandled to perpetual smiles. 315 

Know, smiler ! at thy peril art thou pleased ; 

Thy pleasure is the promise of thy pain. 

Misfortune, hke a creditor severe. 

But rises in demand of her delay ; 

She makes a scourge of past prosperity, 320 

To sting thee more, and double thy distress. 

THE FAVOURS OF FORTUNE MAY JUSTLY CAUSE ALARM. 

Lorenzo, Fortune makes her court to thee : 

306. Thy much indebted tear : The tear I have long owed thee. 

321. To sting thee more^ he. : This passage suggests a somewhat similar 
remark of Caesar, in his Conamentaries, Book I. ch. 14. " Consuesse enim 
Decs immortales, quo graviGs homines ex commutatione rerum doleant, 
quos pro scelere eorum ulcisci velint, his secundiores interdum res et diutur- 
niorem impunitatem concedere." 

322. Lorenzo : It has heen disputed whether the individual bearing this 
name, and so frequently addressed in this poem, was the son of the author, 
(which was for a time the common opinion), or a fictitious character, which 
has, however, its counterpart in almost every community. Evidence may 
be collected from the poem itself and known incidents, to show that the for- 
mer opinion is unfounded. He is never addressed, or spoken of, as his son, 
and things are attributed to him which seem not to be consistent with that 
opinion ; for example, in the line here quoted, it is said, " Fortune makes 
her court to thee." In Night V. he is represented as " burning for the sub- 
lime of life, to hang his airy seat on high." In Night VIII. he is described 
as having " travelled far ;" and in Night V., 

" So wept Lorenzo fair Clarissa's fate ; 
Who gave that angel boy on whom he dotes." 



NIGHT I. 91 

Thy fond heart dances while the syren sings. 

Dear is thy welfare ; think me not unkind ; 

I would not damp, but to secure, thy joys. 325 

Think not that fear is sacred to the storm, 

Stand on thy guard against the smiles of Fate. 

Is Heav'n tremendous in its frowns ? most sure ; 

And in its favom-s formidable too : 

So in the beginning of the same we read — 

" Lorenzo, to recriminate is just, 
I grant the man is vain who writes for praise." 

The inapplicability of the above statements to the son of the author is appa- 
rent from the fact that at the time the Night Thoughts referred to were 
composed, his son (he had but one) was only from eight to twelve years old. 
But the poem either broadly asserts, or plainly implies, that the Lorenzo 
intended by the author was an accomplished man of the world, a man of 
unbounded ambition, an infidel blasphemer, and a careless libertine. We 
agree then with Chambers in the opinion, that it seems to be a mere fancy 
sketch, and, like the character of Childe Harold, in the hands of Byron, it 
afforded the poet scope for dark and powerful painting and was made the 
vehicle for bursts of indignant virtue, sorrow, regret, and admonition. This 
artificial character, as the same writer further observes, pervades the 
whole poem, and is essentially a part of its structure ; but it still leaves to 
our admiration many noble and sublime passages where the poet speaks as 
from inspiration — with " the voice of one crying in the wilderness," of life, 
death, and immortality. 

323. The syren sings : This name is applied to Fortune in the previous 
line. The Syrens, or Sirens, according to ancient fable, were two or three 
attractive females, or female divinities, dwelling upon the shore of Sicily, 
who by their melodious songs so charmed mariners sailing along, that they 
stopped their vessels, forgot their homes, and remained listening till they 
perished from hunger. Another version of the fable is, that by their ravish- 
ing music they enticed men into their hands and then devoured them. 

Fortune^ poetically represented as a goddess, but in fact only indicating 
the various goods of a prosperous worldly life, is, therefore, described here 
as alluring, with a view to injure, her favourites, or at least with such a 
tendency. 

325. But to secure^ &c. : But with a view to secure thy joys. 

326. Sacred to the storm : Due only to the storm. 

329. ^nd in its favours, &c. : In this line, and the preceding, the author 
drops the language of figure and speaks plainly. What he had called the 
smiles of Fortune, and of Fate, a phraseology suited to the notions of pagan- 



92 THE COMPLAINT. 

Its favoiu-s here are trials, not rewards ; 330 

A call to duty, not discharge from care ; 

And should alarm us full as much as woes ; 

Awake us to then cause and consequence. 

And make us tremble, weigh'd with om* desert ; 

Awe JSTatm-e's tumult, and chastise her joys, 335 

Lest, while we clasp, we kill them ; nay, invert 

To woi-se than simple misery then* charms. 

Revolted joys, hke foes in civil war. 

Like bosom friendships to resentment sour'd, 

With rage envenom'd rise against our peace. 340 

Beware what earth calls happiness ; beware 

All joys but joys that never can expire. 

"Who builds on less than an immortal base. 

Fond as he seems, condemns his joys to death. 

DEATH OF PHILANDER. 

Mine died with thee. Philander ! thy last sigh 345 

Dissolved the charm ; the disenchanted earth 
Lost aU her lustre. T\niere her ghtt'ring towers ? 
Her golden mountains where ? all darken'd down 
To naked waste ; a di'eary vale of teai*s : 
The great magician's dead ! Thou poor pale piece 350 

ism, are here more appropriately and truly denominated the favours of 
heaven. 

335. Nature's tumult : The agitation or high excitement naturally spring- 
ing from great prosperity. 

338. Revolted Joys : Objects that once produced joy but have ceased to 
afford it. 

344. Fond as he seems : Much delighted (with them) as he seems. 

34.5. Philander : As some suppose, the son-in-law of the author, who, ac- 
cording to one account, died in 1736, and, according to another in 1741. But 
compare note (214). The expressions of the author's grief are, to say the 
least, quite as strong as the circumstances seem capable of producing, if not 
a little stronger. 

350. The great magician : Philander is so called from the wonderful and 
incomprehensible charm which, when living, he gave to earth, and to all the 
scenes of domestic enjoyment in which he participated. 



NIGHT I. 93 

Of outcast eartli, in darkness ! what a change 

From yesterday ! Thy dai-hng hope so near, 

(Long labour'd prize !) O how ambition flush'd 

Thy glowing cheek ! ambition, truly great, 

Of virtuous praise. Death's subtle seed mthin, 355 

(Sly, treach'rous miner !) working in the dai'k, 

Smiled at thy well-concerted scheme, and beckon'd 

The worm to riot on that rose so red, 

Unfaded ere it fell ; one moment's prey ! 

Man's foresight is conditionally wise; 360 

Lorenzo ! wisdom into folly turns 
Oft the fii-st instant its idea fak 
To labouring thought is born. How dim om* eye ! 
The present moment terminates our sight ; 
Clouds, thick as those on doomsday, drown the next ; 365 
We penetrate, we prophesy in vain. 
Time is dealt out by particles, and each, 
Ere mingled with the streaming sands of life, 

355. Of virtuous praise : To the credit of Philander it is here asserted that 
his glowing cheek had beeii flushed with the ambition of virtuous praise, of 
praise for virtuous deeds ; not for deeds of questionable morality or of de- 
cided immorality. 

The seed of Death is personified, though not very properly. It is hard to 
conceive of a seed acting the part of a miner^ or exhibiting treachery, practis- 
ing smiles, and beckoning to the worm. If these things had been said of 
Death, the figure would not have offended a correct and delicate taste. 

360. Conditionally wise: Man's foresight is wise only on conditions ; either 
within certain narrovv^ limits, or on the supposition that events occur as were 
anticipated. Man's foresight is not absolute, irrespective of contingencies or 
unlooked for emergencies. That the above is a just account of the author's 
meaning is not confidently asserted, for the expression is obscure and unu- 
sual. 

363. To labouring thought is born : Is produced, as the result of painful, 
earnest thinking. 

365. Doomsday : The awful day of final judgment. 

368. Streaming sands of life : Successive flowing sands, or moments of life ; 
those that have passed by. Each particle of Time is sworn not to reveal the 
period " where (a man's) eternity begins^ 



94 THE COMPLAINT. 

By Fate's inviolable oath, is sworn 

Deep silence, " Where eternity begins." 370 

DANGER OF PROCRASTINATION. 

By Nature's law, what may be, may be now ; 
There's no prerogative in human hours. 
In human hearts what bolder thought can rise 
Than man's presumption on to-morrow's dawn ? 
Where is to-morrow ? In another world. 375 

For numbers this is certain ; the reverse 
Is sure to none ; and yet on this Perhaps, 
This Peradventure, infamous for lies, 
As on a rock of adamant we build 

Om* mountain-hopes, spin out eternal schemes, 380 

As we the Fatal Sisters could outspin, 

372. No prerogative in human hours : No exclusive privilege, no inalienable 
ownership, in human hours. Their continued possession cannot be counted 
upon. 

374. Presumption on to-morrow'' s dawn: The author does not mean to 
assert that it is a bold and unwarrantable thought to calculate upon the oc- 
currence of to-morrow's dawn, but to presume confidently that we shall our- 
selves live to see it, and be allowed then to prosecute our favourite schemes. 
We all have an instinctive and most useful belief in the constancy of Nature, 
and in the regular succession of days ; without which belief all enterprise and 
progress would be arrested, and human interests sadly neglected and de- 
ranged. Still we are not to forget, that while the diurnal and annual 
revolutions of the earth may continue in beautiful and mathematical regula- 
rity, we at the same time have no ground for the assurance that our own 
earthly existence shall not terminate before another morrow greets the 
world. 

375. In another world : That is, our to-morrow may be in another world ; 
not in this, 

377-8. This Perhaps^ this Peradventure ; this "z> may beP These adverbs 
are of the same meaning, and are used, grammatically, as a substantive, or 
rather in the place of a substantive expression, to which the demonstrative 
this is applied. 

381. jis vje, &c. : As if we could outspin the Fatal Sisters. This line 
should be inclosed in a parenthesis, since it interrupts the grammatical con- 
nexion between the preceding and the following line. An allusion is here 



NIGHT I. 95 

And, big with life's futurities, expii-e. 

Not e'en Philander had bespoke his shroud, 
ISTor had he cause ; a warning was denied : 
How many fall as sudden, not as safe ; 385 

As sudden, though for years admonish'd home ! 
Of human ills the last extreme beware ; 
Beware, Lorenzo ! a slow sudden death. 
How dreadful that deliberate surprise ! 

Be wise to-day ; 'tis madness to defer : 390 

Next day the fatal precedent will plead ; 
Thus on, till wisdom is push'd out of life. 
Procrastination is the thief of time ; 
Year after year it steals, till all are fled. 
And to the mercies of a moment leaves 395 

made to the three sister goddesses of Roman and Grecian mythology that 
are represented as spinning the destinies of men. They were collectively 
called the Fates, Parcce by the Latins ; Moirce (i. e. " the Dispensers") by the 
Greeks. Their individual names in Hesiod are Clotho (spinster) , Lachesis 
(allotter), and Atropos (unchangeable) . The first of these attached the 
thread ; the second spun it ; and the third cut or broke the thread at the ap- 
pointed hour of death. To outspin the Fatal Sisters, is, therefore, to protract 
our lives beyond the divinel)"-appointed termination. 

382. Big with life's futurities : Confidently expecting to realize in the 
present life many future events. 

386. AdmonisWd home : Admonished respecting the grave, to which, as to 
a common home, all are directing their steps. See Night II. (360-1). 

388. Slow sudden death : This expression at first view seems to involve a 
flat contradiction ; but we may interpret it to mean a death resulting from a 
protracted disease, yet sudden and unexpected in its consummation. Such, 
often, is death resulting from the disease called consumption- 

393. Procrastination : The act or habit of putting ©if to to-morrow what 
should be done to-day. With the precrastinator, " ta-morrow is still the 
fatal time when all is to be done, or to be rectified : to-morrow comes, it 
goes, and still I please myself with the shadow, whilst I lose the reality ; 
unmindful that the present time alone is ours ; the future is yet unborn, and 
the past is dead; and can only live — as parents in their children, — in the 
actions it has produced. The time we live ought not to be computed by the 
niuTiber of years, but by the use that has been made of them. It is not the 
extent of ground, but the yearly rent, that gives value to the estate." — Dr. 
Dodd. 



96 THE COMPLAINT. 

The vast concerns of an eternal scene. 

K not so frequent, would not this be strange ? 

That 'tis so fr-equent, this is stranger still. 

DELUSIVE PROMISES OP REFORMATION. 

Of man's miraculous mistakes this beai-s 
The palm, " That all men are about to Kve," 400 

For ever on the brink of being born. 
All pay themselves the compliment to think 
They one day shall not diivel, and their pride 
On this reversion takes up ready praise ; 
At least their own ; theu* futm-e selves applauds : 405 

How excellent that hfe they ne'er will lead ! 
Time lodged in their own hands is Folly's vails ; 
That lodged in Fate's, to wisdom they consign ; 
The thing they can't but purpose they postpone : 
'Tis not in folly not to scorn a fool ; 410 

And scarce in human wisdom to do more. 
All promise is poor dilatoiy man. 
And that through ev'ry stage ; when young, indeed. 
In fall content we sometimes nobly rest, 

Unanxious for ourselves, and only wish, 415 

As duteous sons, our fathei-s were more ^vise. 

400. Are about to live: Are just about to begin to live, that is, as they 
should. In Night II. 149-150, the author says: — 

" We waste, not use our time : we breathe, not live."' 
" Time wasted is existence, used is Ufe."" 

404. Reversion : Prospective change. 

405. Their oion : Their own praise. 

407-8. Folly'' s vails^ &c. : The present time is the avails, the perquisite, the 
gain of Folly- it is all devoted to Folly — to unwise pursuits. Time lodged 
in Fate's hands^ that is, Time future (which is in the hands, or at the sove- 
reign disposal, of Providence) , they design to occupy wisely- 

416. As duteous sons, &c. : The delicate but cutting satire of this passage 
deserves particular notice. The idea is obviously this — when young men 
we consider ourselves as already wise enough — make no exertion, and enter- 
tain no vi^ish to acquire more wisdom ; but nobly extend our wishes in that 
line to our less discerning fathers- 



NIGHT I. 97 

At thirty, man suspects himself a fool ; 

Knows it at forty, and reforms his plan ; 

At fifty chides his infamous delay, 

Pushes his prudent purpose to resolve ; 420 

In all the magnanimity of thought 

Resolves, and re-resolves ; then dies the same. 

ALL MEN ARE THOUaHT MORTAL BUT OURSELVES. 

And why ? because he thinks himself immortal. 
All men think all men mortal but themselves : 
Themselves, when some alarming shock of fate 425 

Strikes thi-o' their wounded hearts the sudden dread ; 
But theii' hearts wounded, hke the wounded air. 
Soon close ; where passed the shaft no trace is found. 
As from the wing no scar the sky retains. 
The parted wave no fiUTow from the keel, 430 

So dies in human hearts the thought of death. 
E'en with the tender tear, which nature sheds 
O'er those we love, we drop it in their gi-ave. 
Can I forget Philander ? that were strange ! 
O my fiill heart ! — But should I give it vent, 435 

The longest night, though longer far, would fail. 
And the lark hsten to my midnight song. 

THE NIGHTIXaALE AND THE POETS. 

The sprightly lark's shrill matin wakes the morn ; 

425. Themselves : All men think themselves mortal, when some alarm- 
ing, &c. 

433. We drop it : That is, the thought of death. What can be more ex- 
quisitely beautiful in poetry, or more justly descriptive of the sad inconsist- 
ency of human nature, than the passage embraced in the last five lines ! 

436-7. Though longer far , &c. : That is, far longer than it is. Jnd the 
lark listen, &c : My midnight song would be protracted till the dawn of 
day. 

438. The sprightly larkh shrill matin, &c. : Morning song. We cannot 
forbear our admiration of the charming idea here introduced — imagining only 
5 



98 THE COMPLAINT. 

Grief's sharpest thorn hard pressing on my breast, 

I strive, with wakeful melody, to cheer 440 

of course, that the shrill and sprightly matin of the lark waJced up the morn; 
thus dispelling the shadows of the night. Who ever listened (says Mrs. 
Ellis) to this voice on a clear spring morning, w^hen nature was first rising 
from her wintry bed, when the furze was in bloom, and the lambs at play, 
and the primrose and the violet scented the delicious south wind that came 
with the gkid tidings of renovated life — who ever listened to the song of the 
lark on sach a morning, while the dew was upon the grass, and the sun was 
smiling through a cloudless sky, without feeling that the spirit of joy was 
still alive within, around, and above him, and that those wild and happy 
strains, floating in softened melody upon the scented air, were the outpour- 
ings of a gratitude too rapturous for words 1 

440. V/ith wakeful melody : The poet's grief was such that he sought to 
solace himself duiing the weary hours of night with the icakeful onelody of 
the verse he was composing ; in which occupation he compares himself 
with Philomel^ or the Nightingale, which pours out her charming utterances 
to the nocturnal stars. The sweet songster derives this name from the my- 
thological story of the transformation of Philomela^ the daughter of an Athe- 
nian king, into a nightingale. With the poets, and Milton especially, this 
bird seems to have been a particular favourite. How beautifully he speaks 
of it in Par. Lost, Book IV. 598-603. 

" Now came still ev'ning on, and twilight grey 

Had in her sober liv'ry all things clad ; 

Silence accompanied : for beast and bird, 

They to their grassy conch, these to their nests, 

Were slunk, all but the wakeful nightingale : 

She all night long her am'rous descant sung : 

Silence Avas pleased." 

I am much disposed to think (shrewdly remarks Mrs. Ellis, in her " Po- 
etry of Life), that this bird owes half its celebrity to the circumstance of 
its singing in the night, when the visionary, wrapped in the mantle of deep 
thought, wanders forth to gaze upon the stars, and to court the refreshment 
of silence and solitude. It is then that the voice of the nightingale thrills 
upon his ear, and he feels that a kindred spirit is awake, perhaps, like him, 
to sweet remembrances, to sorrows too deep for tears, and joys for which 
music alone can find a voice. He listens, and the ever- varying melody rises 
and falls upon the wandering wind ; he pines for some spiritual communion 
with this unseen being; he longs to ask why sleep is banished from a breast 
so tuned to harmony ; joy, and joy alone, it cannot be, which inspires that 
solitary lay: no, there are tones of tenderness too much like grief, and is not 
grief the bond of fellowship by which impassioned souls are held together? 
Thus, the nightingale pours upon the heart of the poet strains which thrill 



NIGHT I. 99 

The sullen gloom, sweet Pliilomel ! like thee, 
And call the stars to listen ; ev'iy stal- 
ls deaf to mine, enamour'd of thy lay. 
Yet be not vain ; there are who thine excel, 
And charm through distant ages. Wrapt in shade, 445 

Pris'ner of darkness ! to the silent hours 
How often I repeat their rage divine. 
To lull my griefs, and steal my heart from woe ! 
I roll their raptures, but not catch their fire. 
Dark, though not bhnd, like thee, Mseonides ! 450 

Or, Milton, thee ! ah, could I reach your strain ! 

with those sensations that have given pathos to his muse, and he pays her 
back by celebrating her midnight minstrelsy in song. 

444. There are who thine excel : Having complimented the sweet Bird of 
Night upon her gaining a favourable audience of the stars while his own lay 
was neglected by them, the author passes to other songsters that in his judg- 
ment far excel ihe nightingale, as they charm through distant ages. He was 
accustomed, he says, while a prisoner of darkness, that is, during the period 
of darkness, to repeat to the silent hours (a highly poetic thought), their 
rage divine (the products of their inspired, energetic, vehement genius). He 
refers, in the first place, to blind Mceonides^ or Homer the immortal poet of 
Greece, and author of the Iliad and the Odyssey : he next refers to another 
blind poet, the equally immortal bard of Britain, and pours out a fervent 
wish that he himself might be endued with a capacity to reach their ele- 
vated strain. And, in the third place, introduces, in the same honourable 
connexion, the more recent British bard, who made Mceonides our own, by an 
admirable translation of the Iliad and the Cdyssey into the English lan- 
guage. ''^ Man too he sung,^^ in his elaborate "Essay on Man." It was, 
however, of man in the present life exclusively. Our author chiefly occu- 
pies himself with man as an immortal being, and expresses in the conclud- 
ing lines an eloquent regret that the able translator of Homer had not, by 
extending his " Essay on Man," saved him the labor, perhaps the disgrace, 
of composing the poem that follows — 

" had he, mounted on his wing of fire, 
Soar'd where I sink, and sung immortal man, 
How had it bless'd mankind, and rescued me !" 

451. Or, Milton, thee: (Like) thee. Some of the most touching lines in 
the Paradise Lost are those in which the bard alludes to the calamity of 
his blindness. There is one in which he compares himself (as in this pas- 
sage he is compared) with the Grecian bard. He also compares himself 
with the nightingale. The passage will thus happily illustrate this portion 



100 THE COMPLAINT. 

Or his wlio made Mceonides our o^vn. 

Man, too, he sung ; immortal man I sing. 

Oft bm-sts my song beyond the bounds of hfe ; 

What now but immortahty can please ? 455 

O had he press'd his theme, pursued the track 

Which opens out of darkness into day ! 

O had he, mounted on his wing of fii*e, 

Soar'd where I sink, and sung immortal man, 

How had it blest mankind, and rescued me ! 460 

of the Night Thoughts, while it must gratify every lover of charming 
poetry. It is taken from Book III. 32 — 50. (See notes on the passage in 
Boyd's Milton.) 

" Nightly I Tisit : nor sometimes forget 
Tliose other two equaU'd with ine in fate, 
So were I equalVd with them in renown^ 
Blind Thamyris and Mind M(Xonides, 
And Tiresias and Phineus prophets old : 
Then feed on thoughts, that voluntary move 
Harmonious numbers ; as the toakefal bird 
Sings darkling, and in shadiest covert hid 
Tunes her nocturnal not^. Thus with the year 
Seasons return, but not to me returns 
Day, or the sweet approach of ev'n or morn. 
Or sight of vernal hloom,, or swmmier''s rose, 
Or flocks, or herds, or hv/manface divine ; 
But cloud instead and ever-during dark 
Surrounds me,fro'm the cheerful ways of men 
Cut off, andy for the Book of knotvledgefair 
Presented wifli a universal blank 
Of Nature's xcorks to me €x»pung''d and ras'd^ 
And Wisdom at one entrance qvdte shut ouV 



NIGHT II 



ON TIME, DEATH, AND FRIENDSHIP. 



€u i^t Eigjit InEnErEhlB l^i £ui nf ^tlmingtnE- 



When the cock crew he wept, — smote by that eye 
Which looks on me, on all ; that Pow'r who bids 
This midnight sentinel, with clarion shrill, 
(Emblem of that which shall awake the dead) 

1. He wept: The scene referred to is thus touchingly related by the Evan- 
gelist Luke, xxii. 60 — 62, " and immediately, while he yet spake, the cock 
crew. And the Lord turned and looked on Peter. And Peter remembered 
the word of the Lord, how he had said unio him. Before the cock crow, 
thou shalt deny me thrice. And Peter went out., and wept bitterly.''^ 

This affecting scene was probably suggested to the poet, on hearing the 
shrill notes of the cock, during his night studies and meditations. He makes 
an ingenious and important use of an event commonly regarded as most in- 
significant, by suggesting that the cock crows, at the bidding of Christ, to 
rouse souls from slumber that they may cherish thoughts of heaven. He is led 
to this idea by considering the clarion of the cock as an emblem of that all- 
awakening trump that shall sublimely usher in the resurrection morn, when 
all the armies of the dead shall rise from their multitudinous graves to enter 
upon a new state of being. 



102 THE COMPLAINT. 

Rouse soiils from slumber into thoughts of Heav'n. 5 

Shall I too weep ? where then is fortitude ? 

And, fortitude abandon' d, where is man ? 

I know the terms on which he sees the light : 

He that is born is listed : hfe is war ; 

Eternal war with woe : who beai^s it best 10 

Deserves it least. — On other themes I'll dwell. 

Lorenzo ! let me tm'n my thoughts on thee, 

And thine on themes may profit ; profit there 

Where most thy need : themes, too, the genuine growth 

Of dear Philander's dust. He thus, though dead, 15 

May still befriend — What themes ? Time's wondi'ous price, 

Death, hiendship, and Philander's final scene ! 



AVARICE OF TIME. 

So could I touch these themes as might obtain 
Thine ear, nor leave thy heart quite disengaged, 
The good deed would delight me ; half impress 20 

On my dark cloud an Ms, and from gi-ief 
Call gloiy. — Dost thou mourn Philander's fate ? 
I know thou say'st it : says thy life the same ? 
He mourns the dead, who five as they desireT" 
Where is that thrift, that avarice of time, 25 

(O glorious avarice !) thought of death inspires, 
As rumom-'d robberies endear our gold ? 

12-13. Themes may profit: Themes (which) may profit. Where most 
thy need (is) • 

16. Price: Value. 

19. Thine ear : The attention of thine ear. Disengaged: uninfluenced. 

21. ^n Iris : A rainbow, which, among the Greeks, was under this name 
personified and imagined as a goddess. The rainbow was also considered to 
be the path by which the goddess descended from Olympus (the residence 
of the gods) and returned thither, in executing the commands of Juno, her 
imperial mistress. 

2.5. That thrift : That economical management. 



NIGHT II. 103 

O Time ! tlian gold more sacred ; more a load 

Than lead to fools, and fools reputed wise. 

What moment granted man without account ? 30 

"What years are squander' d, wisdom's debt unpaid ! 

Our wealth in days aU due to that discharge. 

Haste, haste, he lies in wait, he's at the door. 

Insidious Death ! should his strong hand arrest, 

No composition sets the pris'ner free. 35 

Eternity's inexorable chain 

Fast binds, and vengeance claims the full arrear. 

How late I shudder'd on the brink ! how late 
Life call'd for her last refuge in despaii' ! 
That time is mine, Mead ! to thee I owe ; 40 

Fain would I pay thee with eternity ; 
But ill my genius answers my desire : 
My sickly song is mortal, past thy cure. 
Accept the will ; — that dies not with my strain. 

For what calls thy disease, Lorenzo ? Not 45 

For Esculapian, but for moral aid. 

28-9. More a load than lead : A heavier burden, and no more valued, than 
a load of lead, whilst it is really more precious than so much gold. 

30. Granted: (is) granted. 

32. Our wealth in days^ &c. : We give to our days their proper value 
when we act as wisdom demands ; when we, in the language of the poet, 
discharge the debt of w^isdom. 

35. Composition : Bargaining, or mutual arrangement. 

40. Mead : The name of the author's physician, to whose medical skill 
he attributes his recent recovery from alarming illness. That time is mine, 
that it is my property ; that I have yet an interest in it, to thee I owe. 

What an admirable and unexpected turn does the ingenious author now 
give to the train of thought ! Fain (gladly) would I pay thee with eternity. 
That is, with endless fame upon the page of an imperishable poem. This 
is plain from the three following lines. 

46. Esculapian : Medical — a term borrowed from the name of the fabled 
god of medicine, Esculapius, or ./^^sculapius. In proportion (says Prof. 
Fiske) as men in the early ages were ignorant of the efficacy and use of re- 
medies for disease, there was the great^,r admiration of those who were dis- 
tinguished in the art of healing, and tlie greater readiness to deify them. 
Hence the deification of -Esculapius, who was viewed as the god of medi- 



104. THE COMPLAINT. 

Thou think'st it folly to be wise too soon. 

Youth is not rich in time ; it may be poor ; 

Part with it as with money, sparing ; pay 

No moment, but in pui-chase of its worth ; 50 

And what its worth, ask death-beds ; they can tel 

Pai't with it as with life, reluctant ; big 

With holy hope of nobler time to come : 

Time higher aim'd, still nearer the gi-eat mark 

Of men and angels ; mtue more divine. 65 

AMUSEMENT, THE UNIVERSAL DEMAND. 

Is this our duty, wisdom, gloiy, gain ? 
(These Heav'n benign in vital union binds) 
And spoil we hke the natives of the bough, 
When vernal suns inspii-e ? Amusement reigTis 
Man's great demand : to trifle is to Hve : CO 

And is it then a trifle, too, to die ? 

Thou say'st I preach, Lorenzo ! 'Tis confest. 
What if, for once, I preach thee quite awake ? 
Who wants amusement in the flame of battle ? 

cine, and said to be the son of Apollo and the nymph Coronis Hygeia, the 
goddess of health, was called his daughter. At first the practice in medicine 
was limited almost wholly to the curing of external wounds. The great 
renown which ^sculapius, and his descendants, the Asclepiades obtained, is 
a proof of the novelty and rarity of the healing art in those times, in which 
in fact it was considered as a miraculous gift from the gods. The Ascle- 
piades established several schools in medicine. It was not until a later 
period that the Greeks became acquainted with anatomy. Hippocrates was 
the first who investigated the science systematically, or wrote upon the 
subject. 

50. Of its worth : Of something equally valuable. 

54. Time higher aim'd : Hope of time higher aimed ; aimed, in the direc- 
tion of its pursuits, sf?7^ wearer the great mark of men amd angels^ neunely, a 
more divine virtue than has yet been attained by us on earth. 

57. These^ &c. : The author's remark is deserving of special attention ; — 
that heaven, in great kindness to man, has bound in indissoluble union our 
glory and our gain to duty and wisdom. 

59. Inspire: Impart animation. 



NIGHT II. 105 

Is it not treason to the soul immortal, 65 

Her foes in arms, eternity the piize ? 

WlU toys amuse when med'cines cannot cm'e ? 

When spmts ebb, when hfe's enchanting scenes 

Their lustre lose, and lessen in our sight, 

As lands and cities with then- glitt'ring spires, 70 

To the poor shatter'd bark by sudden storm 

Thi'own off to sea, and soon to peiish there, 

Will toys amuse ? No ; thrones wiU then be toys, 

And earth and skies seem dust upon the scale. 



Redeem we time ? — Its loss we dearly buy. 75 

What pleads Lorenzo for his high-priz'd sports ? 
He pleads time's num'rous blanks ; he loudly pleads 
The straw-like trifles on hfe's common stream. 
From whom those blanks and trifles but from thee ? 
1^0 blank, no trifle, JSTature made, or meant. 80 

Virtue, or purpos'd vu-tue, still be thine ; 
This cancels thy complaint at once ; this leaves 
In act no trifle, and no blank in time. 
This greatens, fills, immortalizes all ; 

This the blest art of tm-ning all to gold : S5 

This the good heart's prerogative to raise 

75. Redeem we time ? Do we make a proper use of time ? Its loss we 
dearly buy ; that thing is clearly bought which has cost us the sacrifice of 
the proper use of time; which has caused us to waste or pervert the giit of 
time. 

81. Still be thine: Still be thy occupation. How wretched is it (says Dr. 
Dodd) , to hear people complain, that the day hangs heavy upon them ; that 
they don' t know what to do with themselves ! How monstrous are such 
expressions among creatures who can apply themselves to the duties of 
religion and meditation ; to the reading of useful books ; who may exercise 
themselves in the noble pursuits of knowledge and virtue, and every hour 
of their lives make themselves wiser and better than they were before ! 

84. Jill : all time. 



106 THE COMPLAINT. 

A royal tribute from tlie poorest hours ; 

Immense revenue ! ev'iy moment pays. 

If nothing more than pui-jDose is thy pow'r, 

Thy purpose fii'm is equal to the deed : 90 

Who does the best his circumstance allows, 

Does well, acts nobly ; angels could no more. 

Om* outward act, indeed, admits restraint ; 

'Tis not in things o'er thought to domineer ; 

Guard weU thy thought : our thoughts are heard in heav'n. 95 

THE VAST lAirORTANCE OF TIME. 

On all important time, through every age, 
Tho' much, and wami, the wise have m-ged ; the man 
Is yet imborn who duly weighs an horn*. 
" I've lost a day" — the prince who nobly cried, 
Had been an emperor without his crown ; 100 

Of Rome ? say rather lord of human race ! 
He spoke as if deputed by mankind. 
So should all speak : so reason speaks in all : 
From the soft whispers of that God in man, 

87 A royal tribute : A large revenue. 

88. Ev'ry moment pays : Every moment pays an immense revenue. The 
grammatical construction would have been made plainer by removing the 
exclamation point to the end of the line. It was placed after revenue for 
rhetorical eifect. 

9-5. Thoughts are heard, &c. : This line enjoins upon us a most weighty, 
but a sadly neglected duty ; — guard well thy thought, which means the same 
as indulge no improper, unmanly thought. This precept is enforced by a con- 
sideration the most striking, and expressed in a highly original manner ; our 
thoughts are heard in heaven. Our thoughts have a voice which is heard in 
heaven. The simple idea is, Heaven, or God. knows our thoughts. 

99. The prince, he. Reference is here made to the Roman emperor Ves- 
pasian, who is said to have made it, during his whole life, a practice to call 
himself to an account every night for the actions of the previous day ; and 
when, upon the review of any day, he could discover no good or useful ac- 
tion done by him, he entered upon his diary this record, diem perdidi — " I have 
lost a day." 

104. That God m man: Reason. 



NIGHT 11, 



lot 



Why fly to folly, why to frenzy fly, 105 

For rescue from the blessings we possess ? 

Time, the supreme ! — Time is eternity ; 

Pregnant with all eternity can give ; 

Pregnant with all that makes archangels smile. 

Who murders Time, he crushes in the bhth 110 

A pow'r ethereal, only not adored. 

PRODIGAL WASTE OF TIME. 

Ah ! how unjust to N'ature and himself 
Is thoughtless, thankless, inconsistent man ! 
Like childi-en babbhng nonsense in their sports, 
We censure Nature for a span too short ; 116 

That span too short we tax as tedious too ; 
Torture invention, all expedients tii'e. 
To lash the hng'ring moments into speed. 
And whirl us (happy riddance !) from ourselves. 
Art, brainless art! our furious charioteer, 120 

(For Natui^e's voice unstifled would recal) 
Drives headlong towards the precipice of death, 
Death most our dread ; death thus more dreadful made ; 
O what a riddle of absm'dity ! 
Leisure is pain ; takes off our chariot-wheels ; 125 

107. The supreme (blessing). 

115. We censure Nature^ &c. : This sentiment reminds us of those excel- 
lent observations which Seneca, the Roman philosopher, has made on the 
same topic. He says — we all of us complain of the shortness of time, anc 
yet have much more than we know what to do with. Our lives are either 
spent in doing nothing at all, or in doing nothing to the purpose, or in doing 
nothing that we ought to do. We are always complaining that our days are 
few, and acting as though there would be no end to them. 

120. Brainless art: Referring to the art or invention {111) we practise to 
make time pass rapidly and in a way that shall prevent reflection upou 
grave and religious subjects. The author justly characterizes the art as 
brainless^ or irrational — one unworthy of an intelligent and immortal being. 

125, Takes off our chariot-wheels : An expression borrowed from the writ- 
ings of Moses— Exod. xiv. 24-5. " And it came to pass that in the morn- 
ing watch the Lord looked into the host of the Egyptians through the pillar 



108 THE COMPLAINT. 

How heavily we drag the load of life ! 

Blest leisure is our curse ; like that of Cain, 

It makes us wander, wander earth around, 

To fly that ijvant Thought. As Atlas groan'd 

The world beneath, we groan beneath an hour. 130 

We cry for mercy to the next amusement ; 

The next amusement mortgages our fields ; 

Shght inconvenience ! prisons hardly frown, 

From hateful time if prisons set us free. 

Yet when death kindly tenders us rehef, 135 



of fire and of the cloud, and troubled the host of the Egyptians, and took off 
their chariot wheels that they drove them heavily^ SfcP^ 

127. Blest leisure is our curse : The antithesis should be noticed. Leisure, 
a blessing, an opportunity of good, in itself, through human folly becomes a 
curse, a torment, and an injury. 

129-J30. jis JLtlas groan'' d, &c. : In Roman mythology, Atlas was the son 
of the giant lapetus. Hesiod represents him as supporting the heaven on 
his head and hands. Homer calls him the wise, or deep-thinking, "who 
knows all the depths of the sea, and keeps the long pillars which hold heaven 
and earth asunder." Tn the progress of time additions were made to 
the legend. He is represented as a king in the north-western borders of 
Africa, who, having refused to Perseus the offices of hospitality, was changed 
into a mountain, by his looking on the head of the Gorgon Medusa which 
Perseus displayed for that purpose. The mountain took the name of Atlas. 
Another legend is, that Atlas resided in Lybia, was devoted to astrono- 
my, and that, having ascended a high mountain for the purpose of making 
astronomical observations, he fell from it into the sea, in memory of which 
event the mountain and the sea were named after him. The story of his 
supporting the heavens may have been suggested either by the height of 
the mountain, or by the habits of Atlas as an astronomer, by supposing him 
to have been the inventor of the artificial sphere. Artists accordingly re- 
present him as bearing our immense sphere upon his shoulders. 

131. For mercy to the next amusement : As aiding us to rid ourselves of 
time, oi hateful time (134). To get rid of it, we procure amusements even 
at the expense oi fields that we are obliged to mortgage, and would even en- 
dure imprisonment if that would relieve us of the hateful commodity yet on 
hand. Yet, strange inconsistency ! when Death proposes to take it all at a 
stroke, we marvellously change our opinion of its value, as the author finely 
illustrates human feeling respecting this matter in the remainder of this 
paragraph, 



NIGHT II. 109 

We call him cruel ; years to moments shrink, 

Ages to yeai-s. The telescope is tui-n'd. 

To man's false optics (from his folly false) 

Time, in advance, behind him hides his wings. 

And seems to creep decrepit with his age ; 140 

Behold him when past by ; what then is seen 

But his broad pinions s^vifter than the winds ? 

And all mankind, in contradiction strong, 

Kueful, aghast ! ciy out on his career. 

CAUSE AND CURE OF THE COMPLAINTS AGAINST TIME. 

Leave to thy foes these erroi-s and these ills ; 145 

To ISTature just, their cause and cure explore. 
Not short Heav'n's bounty ; boundless our expense ; 
^ No niggard ISTatm-e ; men ai-e prodigals. 

"We waste, not use, our time ; we breathe, not Kve. 
/ Time wasted is existence, used is life ; 150 

And bare existence, man, to live ordain'd, 
Wrings and oppresses with enormous weight. 
And why ? since time was given for use, not waste, 
Enjoin'd to fly ; with tempest, tide, and stars. 
To keep his speed, nor ever wait for man ; 155 

Time's use was doom'd a pleasure, waste a pain ; 
That man might feel his error if unseen, 

139. Time^ in advance^ &c. : A most beautiful and original illustration. 

146. Cause and cure : The former is our prodigal waste of time : the lat- 
ter is our proper use of it, as explained in the following lines. 

151. Man: object of the verbs, wrmg-s and oppresses. Orc?amec? is a parti- 
ciple agreeing with man. 

153. For use., not waste: There are five things, says Dr. Dodd, in which a 
terrible waste of time is too commonly made ; in sleep, in meals, in dress 
(each absolutely necessary, yet each, alas ! how much abused by us) , in idle 
and impertinent visits, and useless conversation when in company, and in 
vain and romantic thinking when alone. 

157. Feel his error if unseen : Might from his painful sensations, if not 
from his intellectual perceptions, discover when he was misapplying his 
time. JJoom'd, in the line above, means appointed to be. 



110 THE COMPLAINT. 

And feeling, fly to laboui' for his cure ; 

Not blund'ring, split on idleness for ease. 

Life's cares are comforts ; such by Heav'n design'd; 160 

He that hath none must make them, or be wretched. 

Cares are employments ; and without employ 

The soul is on a rack ; the rack of rest, 

To souls most adverse ; action all their joy. 

Here, then, the riddle mark'd above unfolds ; 165 

158. Fly to labour for his cure : An ancient philosopher well remarked ; — 
" love labour : if you do not want it for food, you may for physic," 

159. Split on idleness : Allusion is made to a vessel dashing upon a rock 
and going to pieces. The figure is a strong one, and suited to impress us 
with the dangerous mistake those make who imagine that want of employ- 
ment will be a source of ease. It w^ill give as much ease to the mind, as 
the fatal rock gives to the vessel that is split upon it. 

160. Cares are comforts: Our author abounds in pleasant and unexpected 
contrasts, as in this instance : so further on, the rock of rest. Dionysius, the 
Elder, on one occasion was asked if he was at leisure and had no business to 
attend to. " The gods forbid," exclaimed he, " that ever it should be so 
with me ; for a bow, they say, will break if it be over-bent ; but the mind 
if it be over-slack." 

161. Must make them^ &c. : No man, says Dr. Dodd, can be happy in total 
idleness : he that should be condemned to lie torpid and motionless " would 
fly for recreation to the mines and the gallies." And it is well when nature 
or fortune find employment for those who would not have known how to 
procure it for themselves. Sir William Temple relates the story of an old 
man near the Hague, " who," says he, " served my house from his dairy, and 
grew so rich that he gave it over, bought a house and furnished it at the 
Hague, resolving to live at ease the rest of his life; but at length grew so 
weary of being idle, that he sold it, and returned to his dairy." That old 
man has had many imitators. 

163. The rack of rest : The rack is an instrument of torture, to which rest 
is here compared, because a total want of employment brings uneasiness and 
torment. 

The ancient Romans (as a learned vrriter observes) were such haters of 
idleness that, v^^hereas, in their theology, ^genotia, who was to stir up to 
action : Stimula, vi'ho was to impel men to diligence ; and Strenua, who was 
to give them constancy and firmness, vi^ere all three received as deities, and 
were virorshipped in temples vi^ithin the city ; they would not receive Quiet, 
or Rest, as a goddess in public, but built a temple for her in one of their 
highways, without the city walls. 



NIGHT II. Ill 

Then time tm*ns torment, when man tm-ns a fool. 

We rave, we wrestle with great IS'ature's plan ; 

"We thwart the Deity, and 'tis decreed, 

Who thwart his will shall contradict their own. 

Hence om* unnat'ral quarrel with ourselves ; 1*70 

Our thoughts at enmity ; our bosom-broil ; 

We push Time from us, and we vdsh him back ; 

Lavish of lustrums, and yet fond of life ; 

Life we think long and short ; death seek and shun ; 

Body and soul, like peevish man and wife, 175 

United jar, and yet are loth to part. 

O the dark days of vanity ! while here 
How tasteless ! and how tenible when gone ! 
Gone ! they ne'er go ; when past, they haunt us still ; 
The spirit walks of ev'ry day deceased, 180 

And smiles an angel, or a fury frowns. 
Nor death nor life delight us. If time past 
And time possest both pain us, what can please ? 
That which the Deity to please ordain'd. 
Time used. The man who consecrates his houi*s 185 

By vig'rous effort and an honest aim*. 
At once he draws the sting of life and death ; 
He walks with Nature, and her paths are peace. 

166. Time turns torment: Becomes a source of torment. For an excellent 
illustration of this idea we may turn to Thomson's Castle of Indolence. 

" Their only labour is to kill the time ; 
And labour dire it is, and weary woe. 
They sit, they loll, turn o'er some idle rhyme, 
Or saunter forth, with tottering steps and slow : 
This soon too rude an exercise they find ; 
Straight on the couch their limbs again they throw, 
Where hours on hours they sighing lie reclined, 
And court the vapory god soft-breathing in the wind." 

171. Our bosom-broil : Contending passions. 

173. Lustrums : The Roman lustrum was a period of five years : at the 
end of which period the feast called Lustralia was observed, during which 
the censor purified the people by various sacrifices and ceremonies. 

180. The spirit walks, &c. : The spirit (or ghost) of every deceased day 
walks (behind us) and smiles, &c. 



112 THE COMPLAINT. 



TIME ITS NATURE, ORIGIN, AND SPEED. 

Our error's cause and cure are seen ! see next 
Time's nature, origin, importance, speed ; 190 

And thy great gain from urging his career. — 
AH-sensual man, because untouch' d, unseen, 
He looks on time as nothino\ Nothino; else 
Is truly man's ; 'tis Fortune's — Time's a god. 
Hast thou ne'er heard of Time's omnipotence? 195 

For, or against, what wonders can he do ! 
And will : to stand blank neuter he disdains. 
Not on those terms was Time (Heav'n's stranger) sent 
On his important embassy to man. 

Lorenzo ! no : on the long destined hour, 200 

From everlasting ages growing ripe. 
That memorable hour of wondrous birth, 
"When the Dread Sire, on emanation bent. 
And big with Natm-e, rising in his might, 
Call'd forth creation (for then Time was born) 205 

By Godhead streaming through a thousand worlds ; 
Not on those terms, from the great days of heav'n, 
From old Eternity's mysterious orb 
Was Time cut off, and cast beneath the skies ; 
The skies, which watch him in his new abode, 210 

190. Timeh nature: See (194). It is a god— an omnipotent wonder- 
worker (196). 

192. Because untouched, &c. : Because time cannot be handled or seen. 
All-sensual^ (entirely sensual) man looks upon it as nothing. 

194 Tis Fortuneh: Everything, but time, belongs to Fortune, or is be- 
yond our control. 

198. Heaven's stranger: A stranger sent to us from heaven. 

2C3-4. On emanation bent : Purposing an emanation from himself; intent 
on originating some effect. And big with Nature, about to give birth to the 
various objects of nature. 

205. Time was born : The date of the creation of the universe is described 
as the origin of time. Its origin is farther indicated (209) as something cut 
off from eternity^ mysterious circle^ and cast beneath the skies. 



NIGHT II. 113 

Measming his motions by revolving spheres ; 

That horologe machinery divine. 

Hours, days, and months, and years, his children, play, 

Like num'rous wings, around him, as he flies : 

Or rather, as unequal plumes, they shape 215 

His ample pinions, swift as darted flame, 

To gain his goal, to reach his ancient rest, 

And join anew Eternity his she ; 

In his immutabihty to rest. 

When worlds, that count his circles now, unhinged, 220 

(Fate the loud signal sounding) headlong rush 

To timeless night and chaos, whence they rose. 

212. Horologe machinery : Time-measuring (hour-telling) machinery, by 
which expression our author indicates the moving bodies of the solar and 
stellar systems. 

213. His children, play, &c. : Hours, days, and months, and years, are here 
beautifully represented as the children of Time, playing like numerous wings 
(birds with wings) around him, as he flies towards his own sire, Eternity 
(218) . It is a pity that our author did not content himself with this represen- 
tation ; but, ever fond of displaying his ingenuity, he spoils the effect of the 
passage by immediately representing the hours, &c., not as smaller birds 
sporting around the parent bird, but as plumes or feathers of unequal size, 
giving shape to the ample pinions (wings) of Time, as the offspring of 
Eternity, and hastening to join his sire. This rapid change of figure is in 
exceedingly bad taste. Either of the above representations, alone, is appro- 
priate ; but if one is correct the other is false, and of course they should not 
have both been brought forward. The hours ■ ^-c, could not be little birds 
fluttering around their mightier sire, and at the same time the feathers that 
composed his ample pinions. 

220. Unhinged : It is difficult to perceive the propriety of this epithet in 
its application to the rolling worlds of space. They are not moving on 
hinges, and hence when it shall please their Creator to stop their move- 
ments and reduce them again to chaos, the act will be something quite dif- 
ferent from that which this epithet expresses. The author may have used it 
on the authority of Milton, who applies it to the world, but without reference 
to its motion in its orbit. 

" His constellations set 
And the well-balanced world on hinges hung." 

221. Fate: A Pagan term in a Christian sense ; Providence, or God acting 
in conformity to his own fixed purpose. 



114 THE COMPLAINT. 

^ Why spur tlie speedy ? wliy "with levities ~ 

New-wing thy short, short day's too rapid flight ! 
Know'st thou, or what thou dost, or what is done ? 225 

Man flies from time, and time from man ; too soon 
In sad divorce this double flight must end ; 
And then where are we ? where, Lorenzo, then 
Thy sports, thy pomps ? I grant thee, in a state 
Not unambitious ; in the ruffled shroud, 280 

Thy Parian tomb's triumphant arch beneath. 
Has Death his fopperies ? Then well may Life 
Put on her plume, and in her rainbow shine. 

THE LORENZOS OF THE AGE. 

Ye well array'd ! ye hlies of our land ! 

223-4. With levities new-wing, &c. : The author here speaks of the too 
rapid flight of man's short day being hastened by the frivolities that give new 
wings to it. The period of a person's life on earth is here represented by a 
bird in rapid motion : M^hereas, a few lines above, the whole duration of the 
visible universe was presented under the same figure. 

225. Or : The first of these, in poetic usage, means either. 

231. Parian tomb: Tomb constructed of the Parian marble — marble from 
one of the Grecian islands (Paros); distinguished for its durability, beauty, 
and expensiveness. In Dr. Clarke's Travels (quoted by Anthon) is a 
long and particular account of the varieties of marble found in different parts 
of Greece, and out of which the world-renowned statuary of ancient 
Greece was formed. The qualities (he informs us) that give great value to 
the Parian over the Pentelican are, that of hardening by exposure to atmo- 
spheric air, and the consequent property of resisting decomposition through a 
series of ages. The Pentelican is white, and hence in the early periods of 
Grecian art was preferred. Of this the famous Parthenon at Athens was 
built ; but the finest Grecian sculpture which has been preserved to the pre- 
sent time, is generally of Parian marble. The statues and bas-reliefs exe- 
cuted in this kind of marble retain, with all the delicate softness of wax, the 
mild lustre even of their original polish, while those which were constructed 
of Pentelican marble have been decomposed, and sometimes exhibit a sur- 
face as earthy and as rude as common limestone. The true Parian marble 
has generally somewhat of a faint bluish tinge among the white, and often 
has blue veins in different parts of it. In one of his Odes, Horace thus al- 
ludes to it— Bk. I. Od. 19. 

" CTrit me Glyceraj nitor, 
SpUndentis Pario marmore pv/rin^.'''' 



NIGHT II. 115 

Ye lilies male ! who neither toil nor spin, 235 

(As sister lilies might) if not so wise 

As Solomon, more sumptuous to the sight ! 

Ye dehcate ! who nothing can support, 

Yom-selves most insupportable ! for whom 

The winter rose must blow, the sim put on 240 

A brighter beam in Leo ; silky-soft 

Favonius breathe still softer, or be chid ; 

And other worlds send odoui-s, sauce, and song, 

And robes, and notions, framed in foreign looms ! 

O ye Lorenzos of om- age ! who deem 245 

One moment unamused a misery 

Not made for feeble man ; who call aloud 

For ev'iy bauble drivell'd o'er by sense, 

For rattles and conceits of ev'ry cast ; 

For change of foUies and relays of joy, 250 

235. Ye lilies male, &c. : A witty comparison, suggested by what was said 
of the lilies of the field, by the great Teacher, that they tieither toil twr spin 
(Mat. 6 : 28) . Our author is characterizing the fops or dandies of his age. 

238. Who nothing can support : Who can carry nothing. The turn next 
given to the thought is full of humour — yourselves most insupportable. 

241. In Leo : One of the constellations or signs of the Zodiac in which the 
Eun appears during winter ; the constellations being usually represented on 
celestial charts under the figures of various animals to which the relative 
positions of the prominent stars which they contain are conceived to bear 
some resemblance. 

242. Favonius: The west wind which prevailed at the commencement of 
spring. It also had the name of Zephyrus, or Zephyr. Milton thus writes 
of it in his Allegro. 

" The frolic wind that breathes the spring, 
Zephyr -svith Aurora playing 
As he met her once a Maying, &c." 

244. Notions : Fanciful things. It seems that the phrase Yankee notions 
is not exactly original with us : but was used by our author a century ago 
and more. 

248. BrivcU'd o'^er by sense : Over which the senses were foolishly and 
constantly employed. 

250. Relays of joy: Succession of joys, in allusion to horses provided at 
regular intervals for the use of the messengers of Eastern kings. 



116 THE COMPLAINT. 

To drag your patient through the tedious leng-th 

Of a short winter's day say, sages, say ! 

Wit's oracles ; say, dreamers of gay dreams ; 

How will you weather an eternal night 

Where such expedients fail ? 255 

THE OPERATIONS OF CONSCIENCE. 

O treach'rous Conscience ! while she seems to sleep 
On rose and myrtle, luU'd with syi-en song ; 
While she seems nodding o'er her charge, to drop 
On headlong appetite the slacken'd rein, 

And give us up to license, unrecall'd, 200 

Unmark'd ; — see, from behind her secret stand, 
The sly informer minutes ev'ry fault. 
And her dread diary with horror fills. 
Not the gross act alone employs her pen : 
She reconnoitres Fancy's airy band, 265 

A watchful foe ! the formidable spy, 
List'ning, o'erhears the whispers of our camp. 
Our dawning pm'poses of heart explores, 
And steals our embryos of iniquity. 

As all-rapacious usurers conceal 270 

Their Doomsday-book from all-consuming heirs ; 

256. O treach'rous Conscience, &c. : With this line commences an admirable 
personification of this distinguishing and authoritative faculty of the human 
soul ; that by which we take cognizance of actions as right or wrong — by 
which also we approve the former and disapprove of the latter ; and by 
which we are, further, ordered to practise the right and abstain from tbe 
wrong. By the operations of this faculty we are led, moreover, to anticipate 
the retributions of another state of existence. 

She is called treacherous, by our author, in allusion to the fact that she 
seems now to be asleep, and to pay no regard to actions for each of which 
hereafter, with tremendous severity, she will call us to a full account. 

257. Syren song : Explained Night I. (323) . 

269. Embryos of iniquity : The purposes that may have been formed to 
commit any acts of iniquity, and which in a certain time would grow into 
outward acts. 

271. Doomsday-book : Book of accounts ; involving the idea of ruin to 



NIGHT 11. 



117 



Thus, with indulgence most severe, she treats 

Us spendthi'ifts of inestimable time ; 

Unnoted, notes each moment misapplied ; 

In leaves more durable than leaves of brass 275 

Writes our whole history, which Death shall read 

In ev'ry pale delinquent's private ear. 

And judgment publish ; publish to more worlds 

Than this ; and endless age in gToans resound. 

Lorenzo, such that sleeper in thy breast ! 280 

Such is her slumber, and her vengeance such. 

For shghted counsel : such thy futm*e peace ! 

And think'st thou still thou canst be wise too soon ? 

time's momentous value. 

But why on time so lavish is my song ? 
On this gi'eat theme kind Natm'e keeps a school, 285 

To teach her sons herself. Each night we die, 
Each morn are born anew ; each day a life ! 
And shall we kill each day ? K trifling kills, 

those against whom charges are therein made. The name may have been 
suggested by the analogy between the reckoning connected with such a book, 
affecting the destiny in this life, and that more solemn and decisive reckon- 
ing which is connected with the " books" the Scriptures speak of as forth- 
coming in the day of final doom — the day of judgment, when the accounts 
of our lifetime on earth will be presented, and a corresponding sentence 
awarded. 

The rapacity of the usurer induces him to conceal from extravagant heirs 
of a fortune not yet in their possession, the swelling account which his 
books show against them, lest they should be alarmed at its amount, and be- 
come more prudent in their expenditure, and thus diminish the gains of the 
usurer from money loaned them. This illustrates finely the subject in hand. 

274. Unnoted : That is, by us. The play upon the word note is worthy 
of remark ; wnnoted^ notes. 

280. Such that sleeper: Such is, &c. 

286. Each night we die : We seem to die. Death is often, from the appa- 
rent resemblance, called sleep. 

288. If trifling Jcills^ &c. : The thoughts expressed immediately above and 
the language in which they are conveyed, for their terseness originality, 



118 THE COMPLAINT. 

Sure vice must butcher. O what heaps of slain 

Cry out for vengeance on us ! Time destroy'd 290 

Is suicide, where more than blood is spilt. 

Time flies, death urges, knells call, Heav'n invites, 

Hell threatens : all exerts ; in effort all ; 

and impressiveness, deserve our attentive study and meditation. As an il- 
lustration, in part, of what is implied in trifling with time, the following 
pithy observations of a recent English writer deserve profound regard. 

Individuals there are who are doing something, though it would be diffi- 
cult to specify what. They are busy, but it is a busy idleness. To annihi- 
late time, to quiet conscience, to banish care, to keep ennui out of one door, 
and serious thoughts out of the other, gives them all their occupation. And, 
betwixt their flattering visits and frivolous enjoyments, their midnight di- 
versions, their haggard mornings, and shortened days, their yavs^ning attempts 
at reading, and sulky application to matters of business which they cannot 
well evade; betvs^ixt mobs of callers, and shoals of ceremonious notes, they 
fuss and fret themselves into the pleasant belief that they are the most wor- 
ried and hard-driven of mortal men. To flit about from house to house ; to 
pay futile visits, where, if the talk were written down, it would amount to 
little more than the chattering of a swallow; to bestow all your thoughts 
on graceful attitudes, and nimble movements, and polished attire ; to roam 
from land to land, with so little information in your head, or so little taste 
for the sublime and beautiful in your soul, that could a swallow publish his 
travels, and did you publish yours, we should probably find the one a coun- 
terpart of the other : the winged traveller enlarging on the discomforts of his 
nest, and the wingless one on the miseries of his hotel or his chateau ; you 
describing the places of amusement, or enlarging on the vastness of the 
country and the abundance of the game, and your rival eloquent on the self- 
same things. Oh, it is a thought not ridiculous, but appalling. If the 
earthly history of some were written down ; if a faithful record were kept 
of the way they spend their time ; if all the hours of idle vacancy or idler 
occupancy were put together, and the very small amount of useful diligence 
deducted, the life of a bird or quadruped would be a nobler one — more wor- 
thy of its powers, and more equal to its Creator's end in forming it. Such 
a register is kept. Though the trifler does not chronicle his own vain words 
and wasted hours, they chronicle themselves. They find their indelible 
place in that book of remembrance with which human hand cannot tamper, 
and from which no erasure save one can blot them. 

293. Jill exerts : It is unusual to connect the adjective all. with a verb in 
the singular, but perhaps the expression may here be justified on the ground 
that concentration is thus given to the thought ; as though it were said total- 
ity exerts {itself). Or it may be regarded as equivalent to the phrase, every- 



NIGHT II. 119 

More than creation labours ! — ^labours more ? 

And is there in creation, what, amidst 295 

This tumult universal, wiug'd despatch, 

And ardent energy, supinely yawns ? — 

Man sleeps, and man alone ; and man whose fate. 

Fate, irrevei-sible, entire, extreme, 

Endless, hair-hung, breeze shaken, o'er the gulf 300 

A moment trembles ; di'ops ! and man, for whom 

All else is in alarm ; man, the sole cause 

Of this surrounding storm ! and yet he sleeps. 

As the storm rock'd to rest. — Throw years away ? . ..„__^ 

Thi'ow empires, and be blameless. Moments seize, 305 

thing exerts itself ^ thus bringing up the idea of a universal individuality being 
engaged. This thought is expressed in the words that follow and which 
may be regarded as explanatory of the clause we have been considering — in 
effort all^ that is, all things are emj)loyed. 

294. Labours more ? Does more than creation labour ? 

300. Hair-hung : Hung by a hair. All the epithets here applied to the 
fate of man are exceedingly appropriate, and admirably well chosen. 

305. Throw empires. &c. : Em.pires are less valuable than years. Even 
mx)ments should he seized and appropriated, since J^eav'n's ori ifAeiVwmg-. If 
not seized at once they are gone ; they are on the iving. 

A few remarks from Robertson's Charles V. are appropriate. '''Though 
it requires neither deep reflection nor extraordinary discernment to discover 
that the state of royalty is not exempt from cares and disappointment; 
though most of those who are exalted to a throne find solicitude, and satiety, 
and disgust to be their perpetual attendants in that envied pre-eminence ; 
yet to descend voluntarily from the supreme to a subordinate station, and 
to relinquish the possession of power in order to attain the enjoyment of 
happiness, seems to be an effort too great for the human mind. Several in- 
stances, indeed, occur m history, of monarchs who have quitted a throne, and 
have ended their days in retirement. But they were either vi'eak princes, 
from whose hands some stronger rival had wrested their sceptre, and com- 
pelled them to descend with reluctance into a private station. Dioclesian 
is perhaps the only prince capable of holding the reins of government, who 
ever resigned them from deliberate choice, and w^ho continued during many 
years to enjoy the tranquillity of retirement without fetching one penitent 
sigh, or casting back one look of desire, tow^ards the power or dignity which 
he had abandoned." 

In the advice given by Dr. Young, Throw empires away, we are reminded 



120 THE COMPLAINT. 

Heav'n's on their wing : a moment we may wish, 

When worlds want wealth to buy. Bid Day stand still ; 

Bid him di-ive back his car, and re-import 

The period past, re-give the given hour. 

Lorenzo, more than miracles we want, 310 

Lorenzo — O for yesterdays to come ! 

Such is the language of the man awake ; 
His ardour such for what oppresses thee. 
And is his ardour vain, Lorenzo ? No ; 

That more than mii-acle the gods indulge. 315 

To-day is yesterday return'd ; return'd 
FuU-power'd to cancel, expiate, raise, adorn, 
And reinstate us on the rock of peace. 
Let it not share its predecessor's fate, 
Nor, like its eldest sisters, die a fool. 320 

of the singular example of Charles V. who when only about fifty-five years 
old, voluntarily relinquished to his son Philip his vast dominions, embracing 
Germany, Austria, the Netherlands, Italy, and Spain, and retired to a mon- 
astery in Spain, that he might be altogether relieved from the cares of gov- 
ernment, and the pursuits of ambition, and prepare himself for another 
world, of his approach to which he had" for some time been painfully ad- 
monished by the inroads upon his constitution of an incurable disorder. It 
has been said that he renounced his authority over his extensive dominions, 
in disgust, because he could not make them greater, and because his favourite 
schemes were defeated and abandoned ; and because he sickened at the un- 
substantial enjoyment of power and dominion. But while these things may 
have had some share in bringing about the result, it is probable that the 
chief cause was the declining state of his health, which unfitted him for a 
proper care of such vast dominions. 

306. A moment we may wish, &c. : The volumes of biography teem with 
instances of this melancholy truth. 

311. Ofor yesterdays to come: a striking way of expressing the wish for 
a repetition of our past days, or for the privilege of enjoying them once 
more that we might more wisely occupy them in thought and action. 

315. The gods indulge : A heathen mode of expression entirely unworthy 
of a Christian poet 

320. Its eldest sisters : a beautiful personification for the days that have 
preceded the present. But while this figure pleases us, we are immediately 
offended by the incongruity of what follows. It is asked, shall it evaporate in 
fume (smoke),/?/ off fuliginous (sooty) , and stain, &c. Who would thipT^ ^yf 



NIGHT II. 121 



\ 



Shall it evaporate in fume, fly off 
Fuliginous, and stain us deeper still ? 
Shall we be poorer for the plenty pour'd ? 
More wretched for the clemencies of Heav'n ? 



SMILING YESTERDAYS. 

Where shall I find him ? Angels, tell me where : 325 

You know him : he is near you : point him out. 
Shall I see glories beaming fi'om his brow, 
Or trace his footsteps by the rising flowers ? 
Your golden ^^dngs, now hov'ring o'er him, shed 
Protection ; now are waging in applause 330 

To that blest son of foresight ; lord of fate ! 
That awful independent on to-morrow ! 
Whose work is done ; who triumphs in the past, 
Whose yesterdays look backward "s^vTith a smile ; 
Nor, like the Parthian, wound him as they fly : 335 

asking such questions in regard to a person 1 What possible application have 
they to a day, considered as one of a large family of sisters ? It is a promi- 
nent fault even of this highly- gifted poet to spoil a figure by either carrying 
it too far, by changing it into another, or by appending some things that are 
incongruous, of course changing even a bright and beautiful image into an 
obscure and confused one. 

324. More ivretrhed, &c. : " When once," says a powerful writer, "this life 
of wondrous opportunities and awful advantages is over ; v^^hen the twenty 
or fifty years of probation are lied away ; when mortal existence, wdth its 
facilities for personal improvement and serviceableness to others, is gone 
beyond recall ; when the trifler looks back to the long pilgrimage, with all 
the doors of hope and doors of usefulness, past vi^hich he skipped in his frisky 
forgetfulness ; what anguish will it move to think that he has gambolled 
through such a world without salvation to himself, without any real benefit 
to his brethren, a busy trifler, a vivacious idler, a clever fool ! 

325. Him : Reference is made to the son of foresight, ^-c, described (,331-4) . 
335. Like the Parthian, &c. : This singular mode of warfare was practised 

by that ancient oriental nation, and is thus alluded to by Horace, the great 
Roman satirist — 

" irUes (timet) sagittas et celcrerafugam. 
PartJiV'—Od. 13, Book II. 

G 



122 THE COMPLAINT. 

That common but opprobrious lot ! Past hours, 

If not by guilt, yet wound us by their flight, 

K folly bounds our prospect by the grave, 

All feeling of futurity benumb'd ; 

All god-hke passion for eternals quench'd; 340 

All rehsh of realities expu-ed ; 

Eenounced all correspondence ^\ith the skies : 

Or freedom chain'd ; quite "^dngless our deshe ; 

In sense dark-prison'd all that ought to soar ; 

Prone to the centre; crawling in the dust; 345 

Dismounted ev'ry great and glorious aim ; 

Embruted ev'ry faculty divine : 

Heart-bmied in the rubbish of the world, 

The world, that gulf of souls, immoi'tal souls. 

Souls elevate, angelic, wing'd with fire 350 

To reach the distant skies, and triumph there 

On thrones, which shall not mourn theu' mastei^s changed ; 

Though we from earth, ethereal they that fell. 

Such veneration due, man, to man. 

CONTEMPT OF THE WORLD. 

Who venerate themselves the world despise 355 

" Nee patitur Scythas 
Et versis animostim equis 
Parthivm dicere."— Od. 19, Bk. I. 

The mode £>f fighting (says Anthon) was peculiar, and well calculated to 
annoy. When appaitently in full retreat, they would turn round on their 
steeds and discharge their arrows with the most unerring accuracy; and 
hence, to borrow the language of an ancient writer, it was victory to them 
if a counterfeited flight threw their enemies into disorder. 

The fitness of the comparison in the text will, in view of this account, be 
easily and fully appreciated. 

345. From to the centre: That is, of the earth. 

350. Elevate: Elevated. 

352. Masters changed : Men, in place of the angels that were hurled from 
them on account of their apostacy. 

353. Though toe are of cm humble oi-igin — from the earth,- while they that 
fell are ethereal in their nature. 



NIGHT II. 123 

For what, gay friend, is this escutcheon'd world, 

Which hangs out death in one eternal night ? 

A night, that glooms us in the noon-tide ray, 

And wraps our thought, at banquets, in the shroud. 

Life's Mttle stage is a small eminence, 360 

Inch-high the grave ahove ; that home of man. 

"Where dwells the multitude ; we gaze aroimd ; 

We read their monuments ; we sigh ; and while 

We sigh, we sink ; and are what we deplored ; 

Lamenting, or lamented, all om- lot ! 365 

PAST HOURS. 

Is death at distance ? N'o : he has been on thee ; 
And giv'n sm*e earnest of his final blow. 
Those houi-s which lately smiled, where are they now ? 
Pallid to tliought, and ghastly ! drov^Ti'd, all dro\^^iVl 
In that gTeat deep, which nothing disembogues ! 370 

And, dying, they bequeath'd thee small renown. 
The rest are on the wing : how fleet their flight ! 
Already has the fatal train took fire ; 
A moment, and the world's blown up to thee ; 
The sun is darkness, and the stars are dust. 375 

356. Escutcheon'd ivorld : Gay, ornamented world. In the days of chivalry 
knights were distinguished from each other by the emblems or devices im- 
printed on their esaitcheon (shield \ sometimes upon their banner, sometimes 
upon a short garment which they wore above their armor, hence denomi- 
nated a coat of arms. Military companies, families of distinction, and na- 
tions, have long been accustomed to employ certain emblems by way of 
distinction or honor. These devices or emblems are usually called a coat of 
arms, and in modern times are often impressed on carriages or articles of 
furniture. The science of heraldry takes charge of these very important 
modes of distinction ! 

367. Earnest : Pledge, premonition. 

369. Pallid to thought: Pallid not to the eye, but to thought, or in view 
of the mind. 

370. Which nothing disembogues : Which empties nothing out again, but 
retains what it has received. 

375. Stars are dust : Are reduced to dust ; the present tense used, instead 



124 THE COMPLAINT. 

'Tis greatly wise to talk mth our past hom-s ; 
And ask them, what report they bore to heav'n ; 
And how they might Iiave borne more welcome news. 
Their answei-s fonn what men experience call ; 
If Wisdom's friend, her best; if not, woi*st foe. 380 

reconcile them ! Kind Experience cries, 
' There's nothing here, but what as nothing weighs ; 
' The more om* joy, the more we know it vain ; 
' And by success are tutor'd to despah.' 

Nor is it only thus, but must be so. 385 

"Who knows not this, though gray, is still a child. 
Loose then from earth the grasp of fond desire, 
Weigh anchor, and some happier chme explore. 

THE SUN-DIAL ADMONISHES. 

Ai-t thou so moor'd thou canst not disengage, 
ISTor give thy thoughts a ply to future scenes ? 390 

Since by hfe's passing breath, blown up from earth, 
Light as the summer's dust, we take in an* 
A moment's giddy flight, and fall again ; 
Join the dull mass, increase the trodden soil, 

of the future, to indicate the more certain accompHshment of the event and 
to present it more vividly before the mind. The Hne is a very impressive 
one. 

379-384. This passage has several obscurities, but we shall endeavor to 
bring out the author's meaning Tkeir answers form^ ^c. : the history of 
our past hours constitutes expei-ience^ or is a record of it. If Wisdom- s friend, 
Sfc. : If our past hours have been a friend to wisdom, (have been wisely 
employed,) they are her best friend : if not thus employed, they have been 
her worst foe. O reconcile them : Oh reconcile your hours to wisdom ; em- 
ploy them hereafter as wisdom counsels you. Kind Experieoicc cries. Sfc. : 
Experience kindly admonishes you that earthly pursuits are vain. The his- 
tory of past hours utters this language. Even the success of worldly enter- 
prises has served to make us despair of any happier result. 

388. Weigh anchor : Raise it from the ground, that the vessel may pro- 
ceed on a voyage. 

390. Jlply: A turn, or direction. 



NIGHT II. 125 

And sleep, till Earth herself shall be no more ; 395 

Since then (as emmets, then* small world o'erthrown) 

We, sore amazed, from out Eai-th's ruins crawl. 

And rise to fate extreme of foul or fair. 

As man's own choice, (controller of the skies) 

As man's despotic will, perhaps one hour, 400 

(0 how omnipotent is time !) decrees ; 

Should not each warning give a strong alarm ? 

"Warning, far less than that of bosom torn 

From bosom, bleeding o'er the sacred dead ; 

Should not each dial strike us as we pass, 405 

Portentous, as the written wall which struck, 

O'er midnight bowls, the proud Assyrian pale, 

Ei'ewKile high-flush'd with insolence and wine ? 

Like that the dial spealis, and points to thee, 

Lorenzo ! loth to break thy banquet up : 410 

' O man ! thy kingdom is departing from thee ; 

And, while it lasts, is emptier than my shade.' 

Its silent language such ; nor need'st thou call 

Thy magi to decipher what it means. 

Know, hke the Median, Fate is in thy walls ; 415 

Dost ask how ? whence ? Belshazzar-like amazed ! 

Man's make encloses the sure seeds of death ; 

Life feeds the murderer : ingrate ! he thrives 

On her own meal, and then his nui'se devom-s. 

ALL MISTAKE THEIR TIME OF DAY. 

But here, Lorenzo, the delusion lies ; 420 

395. Emmets: Ants. 

399. Controller of the skies : Not in the sense of ruler of the skies ; but our 
own choice decides whether we shall inhabit heaven or not. 

407. Prated Assyrian pale : The Assyrian monarch, Belshazzar. The fact 
alluded to is fully described in the prophecy of Daniel, chap. iv. 

414. Magi : Wise men — philosophers. 

417. Manh make : Man's bodily structure, or constitution. 

419. On heo- own meal : On the same food that life does, and then devours 



126 THE COMPLAINT. 

That solai' shadow, as it measures life, 

It life resembles too : Life speeds away 

From point to point, though seeming to stand still. 

The cunning fugitive is swift by stealth : 

Too subtle is the movement to be seen ; 425 

Yet soon man's hour is up, and we are gone. 

Warnings point out om* danger ; gnomons, time ! 

As these are useless when the sun is set ; 

So those, but when more glorious reason shines. 

Eeason should judge in all ; in reason's eye, 430 

That sedentary shadow travels hard : 

But such our gravitation to the wi'ong. 

So prone our hearts to whisper what we vnsh, 

'Tis later with the wise than he's aware : 

A Wilmington goes slower than the sun ; 435 

And all mankind mistake their time of day ; 

E'en age itself. Fresh hopes are hourly sown 

his nurse (life) . The same food which supports life furnishes material for 
death and the grave to feed upon, to devour. 

421. Solar shadow : Shadow on the sun-dial. 

427. Gnomons : The gnomon is the index or pin on the sun-dial, which in 
the sun-light casts a shadow, and thus indicates upon a graduated circle the 
time of day. Dials were invented hy the Chaldeans in a remote anti- 
quity. 

429. More glorious reason : More glorious than the sun. Warnings are 
delivered in vain unless men are in the exercise of reason, just as the dial is 
useless if the sun does not shine. 

431. That sedentary shadow: That slowly moving, or, as it seems, station- 
ary shadow, travels fast in the view of reason. 

435. j1 Wilmington, &c. : The Earl of Wilmington to whom this Night 
is addressed. The meaning probably is, that his calculations are behind the 
real time : he is older than he supposes ; he has less time than he imagines 
for the accomplishment of the plans he may have formed. So far as a gen- 
tle reproof is conveyed in this statement, our author, lest it should give 
offence to the titled dignitary, softens it not a little by involving all men in 
the same charge — atid all mankind mistake their time of dxiy. So understood, 
tliis line explains the one before it. 



NIGHT II. 



127 



In fuiTOw'd brows. So gentle's life's descent, 

We shut our eyes, and think it is a plain. 

We take fair days in winter for the spring, 440 

And turn our blessings into bane. Since oft 

Man must compute that age he cannot feel. 

He scarce beheves he's older for his yeai-s : 

Thus at life's latest eve, we keep in store 

One disappointment sure, to crown the rest ; 445 

The disappointment of a promised houi'. 

UTILITY OF RATIONAL CONVERSATION. 

On this or similar, Philander, thou. 
Whose mind was moral as the preacher's tongue ; 
And strong, to wield all science, worth the name ; 
How often we talk'd down the summer's sun, 450 

And cool'd our passions by the breezy stream ! 
How often thaw'd and shorten'd winter's eve. 
By conflict kind, that struck our latent truth, 
Best found, so sought ; to the recluse more coy ! 

438. InfurrouPd brows : That is, in advanced life, when the brows havo 
become wrinkled. 

443- Older for his years : Older in consequence of the years he has passed ; 
or older, notwithstanding the years he has seen. 

447. Similar: Similar subjects. Philander! thou whose mind^ Sfc. : The 
grammatical construction here is obscure, and at first glance seems imper- 
fect; but it may be defended, by suggesting that, from thou to name (449) 
inclusive, the vrords are merely descriptive of Philander, who, being dead, 
is here addressed by the rhetorical figure of Apostrophe. Thou stands in ap- 
position with Philander. The words from thoit to name might, with advan- 
tage to the reader, have been included in a parenthesis. 

451-2. Thawed and shorten'd winter's eve : To be taken of course in a figu- 
rative sense ; meaning that their mutual conversation was conducted with so 
much pleasant warmth that the coldness of the winter evening was made to 
appear less intense, and its length failed to be observed. 

454. Best founds so sought : The meaning is, that the collision of two or 
more minds in free and rational conversation is the most thorough and the 
most easy mode of eliciting truth, which to the recluse or private student is 



128 THE COMPLAINT. 

Thoughts disentangle, passing o'er the hp ; 456 

Clean runs the thi-ead ; if not, 'tis throv^ai away, 

Or kept to tie up nonsense for a song ; 

Song, fashionably fruitless ; such as stains 

The fancy, and unhahow'd passion fii-es, 

Chinnng her saints to Cytherea's fane. 4G0 

Know'st thou, Lorenzo, what a fi-iend contains ? 
As bees mix'd nectai- draw from fragrant llow'rs. 
So men from friendship, wisdom and dehght ; 
Twins tied by Natm-e ; if they part they die. 
Hast thou no friend to set thy mind abroach ? 4G5 

Good sense will stagnate. Thoughts shut up, want air, 
And spoil, like bales imopen'd to the sun. 
Had thought been all, sweet speech had been denied : 
Speech, thought's canal ! speech, thought's criterion too ! 
Thought in the mine may come forth gold or dross ; 470 

When coin'd in word, we know its real worth : 
K sterling, store it for thy futm-e use ; 

more coy^ difficult to be approached. Allusion is made in this word to a 
modest, retiring maiden, whose acquaintance is sought. 

" Like Daphne she, as lovely and as coy.'" — Waller. 
This figure under which Truth is represented is beautiful in itself, yet it 
fails to be approved by good taste, from its incongruity -u^ith the figure under 
which Truth had in the same connexion been represented, namely, that of 
sparks struck out by the collision of flint and steel. 

456. Tlie thread : The thread of thought. The comparison is well carried 
out in this passage. 

457. To tie up nonsense for a song : A severe satire upon the particular 
class of songs, a description of which is subjoined ; trashy, profitless, pollut- 
ing to the imagination and provocative of unhallowed passion, chiming her 
saints to Cytherea'sfane, that is to say, moving the devotees of unhallowed pas- 
sion to the temple of Venus^ one of whose classical names is Cytherea. 

464. Twins tied by Nature : A beautiful figure, and a most useful thought. 
Wisdom and Delight are born together, and live united in bonds indissoluble, 
if they part they die. And these are said to be derived from Friendship., from 
Friendship exeiting itself in rational communications. They should (for 
the sake of congruity) have been represented as the ofi^spring of Friendship. 

465. To set thy mind abroach: At liberty — to cause your thoughts to flow. 
472. If sterling : If of excellent quality, of standard worth. 



NIGHT n. 129 

'Twill buy thee benefit, perhaps renown. 

Thought, too, dehver'd, is the more possess'd ; 

Teaching we learn, and giving we retain 475 

The births of intellect ; when dumb, forgot. 

Speech ventilates om* intellectual fii-e ; 

Speech burnishes our mental magazine ; 

Brightens for ornament, and whets for use. 

What numbers, sheath'd in erudition, he 480 

Plunged to the hilts in venerable tomes, 

And rusted in ; who might have borne an edge. 

And play'd a sprightly beam, if born to speech ! 

If born blest heirs of half then* mother's tongue ; 

'Tis thought's exchange, which, hke th' alternate push 485 

Of waves conflicting, breaks the learned scum, 

And defecates the student's standing pool. 

In contemplation is his proud resource ? 

'Tis poor, as proud, by converse unsustain'd. 

Rude thought runs Avild in Contemplation's field ; 490 

474. Thought^ too, &c. : There are several verbal antitheses in this passage 
that give force and vivacity to the thought ; — delivered— possessed — teaching — 
learn : giving — retain. 

476. WJien dumb., forgot : When thought does not give utterance to itself, 
when it is not communicated it is forgotten. 

480. What numbers., sheathed, &c. : A certain class of men is here com- 
pared to old swords rusting in their sheaths. The sheath consists of venera- 
ble tomes (volumes) of erudition., into vi^hich they (the swords) are plunged 
up to the hilt., and are rusted in. Our author satirizes those hard students of 
books who acquire great learning but make no use of it ; and whose minds 
from the neglect of speech, (like rusty swords) have lost the edge, and can 
no longer play a sprightly beam., or exhibit the sprightly gleam of thought 
which breaks forth in the lively interchange of sentiment in conversation 
with intelligent friends. 

487. Defecates: Cleanses from dregs ; makes clear. 

489. ^s proud : The idea is, that students, who refuse to replenish their 
minds by conversation with their friends, contract at the same time, and by 
the same process, intellectual poverty and pride. 

490. Runs wild: Thought is here represented as a unld horse, galloping in 
the field of contemplation. The menage is the horse-tamer, an office assigned 
to conversation ; while emulation is the spur. 



130 THE COMPLAINT. 

Converse, the menage, breaks it to the bit 

Of due restraint, and emulation's s^ur 

Gives graceful energy, by rivals awed. 

'Tis converse quaMes for solitude, 

As exercise for solitary rest : 495 

By that untutor'd, Contemplation raves, 

And Nature's fool by Wisdom's is outdone. 



FRIENDSHIP, THE MEANS OF HAPPINESS. 

Wisdom, though richer than Peruvian mines, 
And sweeter than the sweet ambi-osial hive. 
What is she but the means of happiness ? 500 

That unobtain'd, than folly moi'e a fool ; 
A melancholy fool, without her bells. 
Friendship, the means of wisdom, richly gives 
The precious end which makes our wisdom wise. 
Natm-e, in zeal for human amity, 505 

Denies or damps an undi\dded joy. 
Joy is an import ; joy is an exchange ; 
Joy flies monopolists ; it calls for two : 
Rich fi-uit ! heav'n-planted ! never pluck'd by one. 

497. Nature's fool : or the idiot, is outdone by Wisdom^s fool, the educated 
fool ; the man of learning and study, whose mind has not been disciplined by 
rational intercourse with persons of refinement and of sound sense. 

501. That: happiness. 

502. Fool, xnthout her bells : Our author here probably alludes to the ancient 
practice among kings, and other persons of rank, of employing a buffoon, to act 
as a jester and a butt of ridicule. He is described as being usually dressed 
most fantastically, with a cap having a red stripe on the top, which was 
called a coxcomb ; he also is said to have carried a short stick, with a head 
carved on the end, and surmounted in some cases with a small bladder, 
partly filled with peas and gravel, with which he made frolicksome attacks 
upon those who sought to be amused by him. It is probable that tinkling 
bells constituted in many cases a part of his finery. 

505. In zeal for human amity: In the exercise of zeal for encouraging 
human friendship. 



NIGHT 11. 131 

Needful auxiliars are our friends, to give 510 

To social man true relish of himself. 
Full on oui'selves descending in a line, 
Pleasure's bright beam is feeble in delight : 
Delight intense is taken by rebound ; 

Eeverberated pleasures fire the breast 515 

Celestial happiness ! whene'er she stoops 

510. Needful auxiliars^ &c. : To take friendship from life, says Cicero, 
would be almost the same thing as to take the sun from the world : " So- 
lem a mundo tollere videntur qui amicitiam e vita tollunt." It is indeed the 
sunshine of those who otherwise would walk in darkness ; it beams with 
unclouded radiance on our moral path, and is itself warmth and beauty to 
the very path along which it invites us to proceed. He knows not how 
poor all the splendors of worldly prosperity are in themselves who enjoys 
them with that increase of happiness which friendship has given to them ; 
and he who is still rich enough to have a friend cannot know what extreme 
poverty and misery are, because the only misery which is truly misery is 
that which has no one to comfort it. — Broivnh Phil., vol. Hi. 387. 

512. Full: Exclusively. 

515. Eeverberated: Reflected; those pleasures v/hich we derive from 
others. An illustration of these may be found in the sincere and elegant 
friendship which subsisted between Scipio, one of the greatest of Roman 
generals, and Laelius, one of the wisest and most eloquent of Roman citi- 
zens. It is portrayed by Cicero in his work De Amicitia — who in regard 
to those distinguished fellow countrymen remarks : — " What a consolation 
is it to have a second-self, to whom we have nothing secret, and into whose 
heart we may pour our own with perfect unreserve ! Could we taste pros- 
perity so sensibly, if we had no one to share with us in our joy 1 And what 
a relief is it in adversity to have a friend still more affected with it than 
ourselves." But the friendship of these individuals derived much of its value 
and beauty from its eminent disinterestedness, and the foundation it had in a 
high esteem of each other's virtues. " We both," says Laelius, " derived 
great advantages from it, but these were not our views when we began to 
love each other.' 

Nothing upon earth (says Dr. Dodd), can be so desirable as such an amity. 
But in vain do we seek it among the ignorant, the vain, the selfish, or men 
of loose and profligate principles. We must soon be ashamed of loving the 
man whom we cannot esteem. It is David and Jonathan, it is Damon and 
Pythias, Tully and Atticus, Scipio and Laelius, and such only who can truly 
taste and dignify pure friendship ; and such only can say with Ovid, " Nos 
duo turba sumus :"• we two are a multitude. 



132 THE COMPLAINT. 

To visit eartli, one shrine the goddess finds, 
And one alone, to make her sweet amends 
For absent heav'n — the bosom of a friend ; 
"Where heart meets heart, reciprocally soft, 520 

Each other's pillow to repose di\ine. 
Beware the counterfeit ; in passion's flame 
Heai'ts melt, but melt like ice, soon harder froze. 
True love sti'ikes root in reason, passion's foe ; 
Virtue alone entendei-s us for hfe : 525 

I wi-ong her much — entendei-s us for ever. 
Of friendship's fakest fruits, the fruit most fan- 
Is -VTi-tue kindhng at a rival fii'e. 
And emulously rapid in her race. 

O the soft enmity ! endearing strife ! 530 

This cai-ries friendship to her noon-tide point, 
And gives the rivet of eternity. 

From friendship, which outhves my former themes. 
Glorious survivor of old time and death ! 
From friendship thus, that flow'r of heav'nly seed, 535 

The wise extract earth's most Hyblean bliss, 
Superior wisdom, crown'd with smiling joy. 

FRIENDSHIP, NOT TO BE BOUGHT WITH GOLD. 

But for whom blossoms this Elysian flower ? 
Abroad they find who cherish it at home. 
Lorenzo, pardon what my love extorts, 540 

An honest love, and not afraid to frown. 

536. Hyblean bliss : Honey'd, exquisite bliss ; the epithet is drawn from 
Hybla. a town in Sicily, famous for its honey. 

538. Elysian flower : Delightful flower — beautiful and fragrant. Elysium^ 
according to the conceptions of the classical poets, was a region of perpetual 
spring, of verdant fields, enamelled with beautiful flowers ; abounding also 
in shady groves, and watered with charming streams. In one of Milton's 
poems we have an allusion to the subject. 

" That Orpheus self may heave his head 
From golden slumber on a bed 
Of heap'd Elysian floicoi's:' 



NIGHT II. 133 

Though choice of follies fasten on the great, 

None clings more obstinate than fancy fond, 

That sacred friendship is then- easy prey, 

Caught by the waftui*e of a golden lui-e, 545 

Or fascination of a high-born smile. 

Their smiles, the great and the coquet throw out 

For other hearts, tenacious of their own ; 

And we no less of om-s when such the bait. 

Ye fortune's cofferers ! ye pow'i-s of wealth ! 550 

You do yom- rent-rolls most felonious wrong, 

By taking our attachment to yourselves. 

Can gold gain friendship ? Impudence of hope ! 

As well mere man an angel might beget. 

Love, and love only, is the loan for love. 555 

Lorenzo, pride repress, nor hope to find 

A friend, but what has found a friend in thee. 

All like the purchase, few the price will pay • 

And this makes friends such miracles below. 

HOW TO OBTAIN, AND TO TREAT A FRIEND. 

What if (since daring on so nice a theme) 560 

I show thee friendship delicate as dear. 
Of tender violations apt to die ? 
Reserve will wound it, and distrust destroy ; 
Dehberate on all things with thy friend : 
But since friends grow not thick on ev'ry bough, 565 

Nor ev'ry friend unrotten at the core ; 
Fu'st on thy friend delib'rate with thyself; 
Pause, ponder, sift ; not eager in the choice, 

545. Wafture : Waving. 

550. Cofferers : Treasurers, hoarders. 

555. Loan for love : Means of securing the love of others, 

558. Like the purchase : Like a friend. 

560 Daring : Daring to write. 

565. Friends groiv^ &c. : Friends are here compared to fruit. 



134 THE COMPLAINT. 

N'or jealous of the chosen : fixing, fix : 

Judge before friendship, then confide till death. 5*70 

Well for thy friend, but nobler far for thee. 

How gallant danger for earth's highest prize ! 

A friend is worth all hazards we can run. 

' Poor is the friendless master of a world : 

A world in purchase for a fi-iend is gain.' 5*75 

So sung he, (angels hear that angel smg ! 
Angels fi'om friendship gather half their joy !) 
So sung Philander, as his fi-iend went round 
In the rich ichor, in the gen'rous blood 
Of Bacchus, pin*ple god of joyous wit, 580 

569. Jealous of the chosen: Suspicious, or doubtful, of the friendly disposi- 
tions of those you choose as friends. 

Fixing, fix: Establishing your choice, do it firnaly and permanently. 

570. Judge before friendship : Dr. Thomas Brown has well observed that, 
if we were sufficiently aware how great a command over our whole life 
we give to any one whom we admit to our intimacy ; how ready we are to 
adopt the errors of those whom we love, and to regard their very faults not 
merely as excusable, but as objects of imitation, or at least to imitate them 
without thinking whether they ought to be imitated, and without knowing 
even that we are imitating them, we should be a little more careful than we 
usually are in making a choice which is to decide in a great measure 
whether we are to be virtuous or vicious, happy or miserable ; or which in 
most cases, if we still continue happy, upon the whole must often disturb 
our happiness, and, if we still continue virtuous, make virtue a greater 
effort. 

It is before we yield ourselves then to the regard, that we should strive to 
estimate the object of it, and to estimate his value, not by the gratification of 
a single day, but by the influence which he may continue to exercise on our 
life.— PMos. of Mind, vol. iii. 389. 

578. His friend went round : The name of his friend went round at the 
convivial table in drinking to his health and prosperity ; a practice not to be 
commended, being fraught with evils, as experience abundantly and most 
sadly demonstrates. 

579. Ichor: Juice that flows in the veins of the gods; used by our author 
as synonymous with generous blood., the blood of Bacchus, who in Pagan my- 
thology was the inventor and the god of wine, and of all the dissipation re- 
sulting from its use. Under this figure of ichor and blood, simply wine is 
intended. 



NIGHT ir. 135 

A brow solute, and ever-laughing eye. 

He drank long health and vii-tue to his friend ; 

His friend ! who warm'd him more, who more inspii'ed ; 

Friendship's the wine of life ; but friendship new 

(Not such was his) is neither strong nor pm-e. 685 

! for the bright complexion, cordial warmth, 
And elevating spirit of a friend, 

For twenty summers ripening by my side ; 

All feculence of falsehood long thrown down ; 

All social virtues rising in his soul; 590 

As crystal clear, and smiling as they rise ! 

Here nectar flows ! it sparkles in our sight ; 

Rich to the taste, and genuine from the heart. 

High-flavour'd bliss for gods ! on earth how rare ! 

On earth how lost ! — Philander is no more. 595 

DEPARTED FRIENDS. 

Think'st thou the theme intoxicates my song ? 
Am I too warm ? — Too warm I cannot be. 

1 loved him much, but now I love him more. 
Like birds, whose beauties languish, half-conceal'd, 

Till mounted on the wing, their glossy plumes 600 

Expanded shine with azm-e, green, and gold ; 

581. Brow solute : a brow relaxed not careworn. 

584. Friendship^ the wine of life : A beautiful observation, meaning that 
friendship produces an exhilarating and cheerful glow of feeling, similar to 
that which is experienced from drinking the juice of the grape. Would that 
young men, and all others, would subscribe to the truth of this obser- 
vation ; and, instead, of using the intoxicating beverage, employ as a 
safe and valuable substitute, the excitement of a virtuous friendship — the 
wine of life ! 

The figure is well carried out in the following lines, running a parallel 
between friendship and wine. When ncii\ it is neither strong nor pure ; but 
after twenty summers ripening, ^c. ; all feculence (dregs) long thrown down ; 
virtues, rising — smiling — sparkles — rich to the taste, ^c. 

592. Nectar : The fabled drink of the gods ; the name is applied by poets 
to any peculiarly delightful drink. 



136 THE COMPLAINT. 

How blessings brighten as they take theii* flight ; 

His flight Philander took : his upward flight, 

If ever soul ascended. Had he dropt, 

(That eagle genius !) O had he let faU 605 

One feather as he flew, I then had wrote 

"What h'iends might flatter, prudent foes forbear, 

Rivals scarce damn, and Zoilus reprieve. 

Yet what I can I must ; it were profane 

To quench a glory hghted at the skies, 610 

And cast in shadows his illustrious close. 

Strange ; the theme most affecting, most sublime, 

Momentous most to man, should sleep unsung ! 

And yet it sleeps, by genius unawaked, 

Painim or Christian, to the blush of wit. 615 

Man's highest triumph, man's profoundest fall, 

The death-bed of the just ! is yet undrawn 

By mortal hand : it merits a divine : 

Angels should paint it, angels ever there ; 

There, on a post of honom- and of joy. 620 

DEATH— BED OP THE JUST. 

Dare I presume, then ? But Philander bids, 
And glory tempts, and inclination calls. 
Yet am I struck, as struck the soul beneath 
Aerial groves' impenetrable gloom. 
Or in some mighty ruin's solemn shade, 625 

602. jis they take their flight : We do not fully appreciate our friends nor 
understand their excellencies till death removes them. The comparison 
employed to illustrate this idea is admirable, Like birds, Sfc. 

608. Rivals. &c. : Rivals scarce condemn as a literary performance, and 
Zoilus reprieve^ or delay the execution of the sentence of condemnation. 
Zoilus was a sophist and grammarian of Amphipolis, who had indulged in 
great severity of criticism upon the poems of Homer and the writings of 
Plato and others. 

615. Painim : Pagan. 

619. Ever there: At the death-bed of the just. 



NIGHT II. 137 

Or gazing, by pale lamps, on high-born dust 

In vaults, thin courts of poor unflatter'd kings, 

Or at the midnight altar's hallow'd flame. 

It is religion to proceed : I pause — 

And enter, awed, the temple of my fame. 630 

Is it his death-bed ? No ; it is his shi'ine : 

Behold him there just rising to a god. 

>The chamber where the good man meets his fate 
Is privileged beyond the common walk 
Of \irtuous Hfe, quite in the verge of heav'n. 635 

Fly, ye profane ! if not, di-aw near with awe, 
Eeceive the blessing, and adore the chance 
That threw in this Bethesda yom- disease : 
If unrestored by this, despair your cure ; 
For here resistless demonstration dwells : 640 

A death-bed's a detector of the heart. 
Here tii-ed dissimulation di'ops her mask 
Thi'ough life's grimace, that mistress of the scene ! 

631. Shrine: A miniature temple- There is an allusion to the Pagan 
idea of the apotheosis or deification of the eminently virtuous or distin- 
guished dead. The name god is used here, however, not in the Pagan 
sense, but in that of angel, or glorified spirit. 

636. Fly, ye profane: An imitation of the language of the heathen priest- 
ess.— Virgil's JEn. 6 : 258. 

, " Procul, ! procul este, profani, 

Conclamat vates, totoque absistite luco :" 

638. This Bethesda : See John v. 2 — 4. This is the name of a bath, or 
reservoir of water, existing at Jerusalem in the time of our Saviour, at 
which great cures were miraculously effected. It was hence called Bethesda 
(or house of mercy) , there being five apartments erected around it for the 
accommodation of the sick. 

641. A detector of the heart : As an instance of this, on his death-bed, the 
penitent Earl of Rochester was touched (says Dr. Dodd^ with very strong 
compunction for the various indecencies he had diffused irom his pen ; and 
was extremely solicitous to suppress and stifle them, as suited only to 
serve the cause of vice and profaneness. He ingenuously declared '' that 
that absurd and foolish philosophy which the world had so much admired, 
as propagated by the late Mr. Hobbs and others, had undone him, and many 
more of the best parts in the nation." 



138 THE COMPLAINT. 

Here real and apparent are the same. 

You see the man, you see his hold on heav'n, 645 

If sound his \ai'tue ; as Philander's sound. 

Heav'n waits not the last moment ; owns her friends 

On this side death, and points them out to men ; 

A lectm-e silent, but of sov'reign pow'r ! 

To vice confusion, and to virtue peace. 650 

"Whatever farce the boastful hero plays, 
Virtue alone has majesty in death, 
And greater stiU, the more the tyi-ant frowns. 
Philander ! he severely fi'own'd on thee ; 
'IS^o warning giv'n ! unceremonious fate ! 655 

A sudden rush from life's meridian joys ! 
A wi-ench fi'om all we love ! fr-om all we are ! 
A restless bed of pain ! a plunge opaque 
Beyond conjecture I feeble natm-e's di-ead ! 
Strong reason's shudder at the dark unknown ! GOO 

A sun extinguish'd ! a just opening grave ! 
And, oh ! the last, last ; what ? (can words express, 
Thought reach it ?) the last — silence of a friend !' 
Where are those hoiTors, that amazement where. 
This hideous group of ills (which singly shock) 665 

Demands from man ? — I thought him man till now. 

Thro' natm-e's wi-eck, thro' vanquish'd agonies, 
(Like the stars strugghng thro' this midnight gloom) 
What gleams of joy ! what more than human peace ! 
Where the frail mortal ? the poor abject worm ? 6*70 

No, not in death the mortal to be found. 
His conduct is a legacy for all. 
Richer than Mammon's for his single heir. 

673. Mammon : The Syriac name for the god of wealth. It is used in 
Scripture as synonymous with wealth, or riches. By a liberty granted to 
poets, Milton has designated Mammon as one of the fallen angels, and has 
pourtrayed his character in the most admirable manner — 

" Mammon, the least erected spirit that fell 
From Heay'ii : for e'en in Heaven his looks and thoughts 
Were always downward bent, admiring more 
The riches of Heav'n's pavement, trodden gold, 



NIGHT II. 139 

His comforters he comforts ; great in ruin, 

"With unreluctant grandeur gives, not yields, 675 

His soul sublime, and closes with his fate. 

How our hearts burnt within us at the scene ! 
Whence this brave bound o'er limits fixt to man ? 
His God sustains him in his final hour ! 

His final hour brings glory to his God ! 680 

Man's glory Heav'n vouchsafes to call her own. 
We gaze, we weep ! mixt tears of grief and joy ! 
Amazement strikes ! devotion bm-sts to flame ! 
Christians adore ! and infidels beheve. 

As some taU tow'r, or lofty mountain's brow, 685 

Detains the sun illustrious, fi-om its height, 
While rising vapours and descending shades. 
With damps and darkness drown the spacious vale, 
Undampt by doubt, undarken'd by despair. 
Philander thus augustly reai-s his head, 690 

At that black hour which gen'ral horror sheds 
On the low level of th' inglorious throng : 
Sweet peace, and heav'nly hope, and humble joy. 
Divinely beam on his exalted soul ; 

Destruction gild, and crown him for the skies, 695 

With incommunicable lustre bright. 

Than aught divine or holy else enjoy'd 

In vision beatific. By him first 

Man also, and by his suggestion taught, 

Eansack'd the centre, and viith impious hands 

Eifled the bowels of their mother Earth 

Eor treasures better hid." 

IBk. I. 679— GS8. 

677. Hearts burnt within us : An expression taken from Luke 24 : 32, 
686. From its height : On account of its height. 

695. Destruction gild : Gild the scene of destruction — throw lustre and 
beauty upon death's destroying process. 



NIGHT III 



MRCISSA. 

Ignoscenda qtddem, scirent si ignoscere manes.— Viegil. 



SnEritoii tn ji^r §xm tjiB Mx)^m nf ^nrtkiii 



From dreams, where thought in fancy's maze runs mad 
To reason, that heav'n-hghted lamp in man, 
Once more I wake ; and at the destined hour, 
Punctual as lovei-s to the moments sworn, 
I keep my assignation with my woe. 

PLEASURES OF SELF-COMMUNION. 

! lost to virtue, lost to manly thought, 
Lost to the noble sallies of the soul ! 
Who think it sohtude to be alone. 
Communion sweet ! communion large and high ! 

1-2. From dreams, &c. : An admirable though brief description is given in 
these lines, of dreams and reason, which are the emphatic words. 
5. Assignation : Appointnoent for meeting 



I 



NIGHT III. 14] 

Our reason, guardian angel, and oui* God ! 10 

Then nearest these, when others most remote ; 

And all, ere long, shall be remote but these. 

How dreadful, then, to meet them all alone, 

A stranger ! unacknowledged ! unapproved ! 

Now woo them, wed them, bind them to thy breast ; 15 

To win thy wish, creation has no moi'e. 

Or if we wish a fourth, it is a fiiend. 

But fi-iends, how mortal ! dangerous the desu'e. 

CYNTHIA PREFERRED TO PHCEBUS. 

Take Phoebus to youi-selves, ye basking bards ! 

10. Our reason^ &c. : The communion, eulogized here, subsists between 
Reason (our guardian angel) , and our God. 

11. Then nearest^ &c. : These are nearest when other objects are most 
remote. 

J 9. Phosbus : A Roman name applied to the god Apollo^ also to the sun. In 
the age of Homer he was celebrated as the god of archery, prophecy, and 
music; by later poets he was also honored as the god of day and of the sun. 

The earliest and most natural form of idolatry was the worship of the 
stars, and especially of the sun, whose splendor, light, heat, and salutary in- 
fluence upon all mature, were taken as the supernatural and independent 
powers of a deity. Hence the ancient fiction ascribing personality to this 
luminary, which was worshipped by the Egyptians under the name of 
Horus, by the Persians under that of Mithras, by the later Greeks and Ro- 
mans under that of Phcebus and Apollo. 

Although the Greeks and Romans worshipped Apollo as the god and dis- 
penser of light, and in view of this attribute named him Phcebus, yet they 
conceived another distinct divinity, distinguished from Apollo, especially in 
the earlier fables, under the literal name applied to designate the sun, namely, 
Sol or Helius. These words, therefore, were employed to express not only 
the actual body in the heavens, but also a supposed being having a separate 
and personal existence. It is probable that the worship of this god was 
early introduced into Greece, Many temples were consecrated to Helius. 
The island Rhodes in particular was sacred to him, where was erected his 
celebrated colossal statue, which was about one hundred feet high, and placed 
across the harbor so that a large vessel could sail between its legs. — 
Fisk^s CI. Manual. 

In the text the term Phcebus is used only of the physical luminary, which 
has an advantage above the term sun from the elegant associations which it 



142 THE COMPLAINT. 

luebriate at fail- Fortime's foimtain-head ; 20 

And reeling tlirougli the wilderness of joy, 

Where sense runs savage, broke from reason's chain, 

And sings false |>eace, till smother'd by the pall. 

My fortune is unlike, unlike my song, 

Unhke the deity my song invokes. 25 

I to Day's soft-eyed sister pay my comi, 

(Endymion's rival) and her aid implore ; 

Now fii-st implored in succour to the muse. 

Thou, who didst lately borrow Cynthia's form, 

awakens in the mind of the classical student, and in other minds when those 
associations are made known to them. 

Ye basking bards : Ye bards lying at ease under his luxurious influence. 

26. Dayh soft-eyed tister, &c, : Our author, somewhat after Pagan fashion, 
pays his poetic homage to the Moon, described here by this most beautiful 
and original expression. He represents himself as Endymionh rival in his 
attachment to this soft-tyed divinity, for as such he speaks of her. Fabu- 
lous history informs us that Endymion, the founder of the city of Elis, in 
Greece, gained the affections of Selene, or the Moon, who bore him fifty 
daughters, the rest of the story is not needful for the illustration of our 
author. 

29. Cynthiah form : The Duchess of Portland, to whom this "Night" is 
dedicated, is said at the Duke of Norfolk's masquerade to have assumed the 
dress or appearance ascribed in fable to the goddess Cynthia or Diana — the 
goddess of the night — the goddess of the JMoon. This goddess was described 
besides under the names of Cyllene, Phcebe, (45,) Selene, Delia, Hecate, &c. 
As goddess of the moon, Cynthia, or Diana, was represented, by the artists, 
in long robes, with a long, starred veil, having a torch in her hand, and a 
crescent on her head. As in Apollo the sun was deified and adored, so was 
the moon in Diana. She was also recognized as the goddess of hunting or the 
chase, of which in her youth she was passionately fond. Under this character 
she received from Jupiter a bow with arrows, and a train of sixty nymphs. 
He granted her petition also to be permitted to live a virgin, and she 
was, therefore, the goddess of chastity. Yet some accounts represent her as 
having given her affections to Endymion (note 26) . At Ephesus was built 
a most meignificent temple in honor of this goddess, and in that place it 
would seem from Acts J. 9 : 24 — 35, that she was the prominent object of 
Pagan worship. The dimensions of her temple were 425 feet by 220. It 
W81S adorned with 127 marble pillars, 60 feet in height, and with a splendid 
image of the goddess. It was one of the seven wonders of the world. The 
Colossus, referred to in a former note, was another of those wonders. For 



NIGHT ni. 143 

And modestly forego thine own ! thou, 30 

Who didst thyself, at midnight hom's, inspire ! 
Say, why not Cynthia, patroness of song ? 
As thou her crescent, she thy character 
Assumes, still more a goddess by the change. 

Are there demm-ring wits, who dare dispute 35 

This revolution in the world inspired ? 
Ye train Pierian ! to the lunar sphere, 
In silent hour, address your ardent call 
For aid immortal, less her brother's right. 
She with the spheres harmonious nightly leads 40 

The mazy dance, and heare their matchless strain ; 
A strain for gods, denied to mortal ear. 
Transmit it heard, thou silver queen of heav'n ! 
What title or what name endears thee most ? 
Cynthia ! Cyllene ! Phoebe ! — or dost hear 45 

With higher gust, fair Porl land of the skies ? 

a more full account, Fiske's Manual of Classical Literature may be con- 
sulted. 

37, Ye train Pierian : By this name (derived from Pieria, sacred to them) 
are designated the nine Muses^ those nymphs or subordinate deities to whose 
guardianship were assigned particular branches of knowledge and the fine 
arts, particularly music and song : hence our author appropriately directs 
them, in requiring aid, to call upon the lunar sphere^ the moon — in the fol- 
lowing lines, described as the silver queen of heaven, as leading the mazy 
dance with the harmonious spheres of night, and hearing their matchless strain. 

Here is an allusion to the Platonic doctrine of the '' music of the spheres" 
— the music produced by their harmonious revolution, too delicate to be 
caught by human ear, but easily appreciated and highly relished by the 
celestials. Shakspeare, in his Merchant of Venice, (Act V., Scene 1,) thus 
happily describes it — 

" There's not the smallest orb -which thou tehold'st 
But in his motion like an angel sings, 
Still quiring to the young-ey"d Cherubim ; 
Such harmony is in immortal sounds I 
But "whilst this muddy vesture of decay 
Doth grossly close us in, we cannot hear it." 

39. Her brother'' s right : The right of Phoebus, or the Sun. 
46. Fair Portland^ &c. : A fulsome compliment to the lady to whom this 
" Night" is addressed. 



144 THE COMPLAINT. 

Is that tlie soft encliantment calls thee down, 

More pow'rM than of old Circean charm ? 

Come, but from heav'nly banquets with thee bring 

The soul of song, and whisper in mine ear 50 

The theft divine ; or in propitious dreams 

(For dreams are thine) transfuse it thro' the breast 

Of thy iirst votary — but not thy last, 

E, like thy namesake, thou art ever kind. 

DEATH OF NARCISSA. 

And kind thou ^silt be, kind on such a theme ; 55 

A theme so like thee, a quite lunar theme, 
Soft, modest, melancholy, female, fair ! 
A theme that rose all pale, and told my soul 
'Twas night ; on her fond hopes perpetual night ; 
A night which struck a damp, a deadlier damp 60 

Than that which smote me from Philander's tomb. 
Narcissa follows ere his tomb is closed. 
Woes cluster ; rare are soHtary woes ; 
They love a train ; they tread each other's heel ; 
Her death invades his mournful right, and claims 05 

The gi'ief that started from my hds for him ; 
Seizes the faithless ahenated tear, 
Or shares it ere it falls. So frequent death, 

48. Circean charm : Circe^ according to Homer, was one of the ocean 
nymphs who dwelt upon an island, attended by four other nymphs. Those 
persons who visited her dwelling were luxuriously entertained with food, and 
then on tasting a magic cup which she presented, were changed at once into 
ewine. Milton in his Comus thus introduces the fable — 

" Of Bacchus and of Cii'ce born, great Comus, 
Deep skilled in all bis mother's witcheries, 
And here to every thirsty wanderer 
By sly enticement gives his baneful cup. 

With many murmurs mixed, whose pleasing poison _ 

The visage quite transforms of him that drinks. 
And the inglorious likeness of a beast 
Fixes instead, unmoulding reason's mintage 
Character'd in the face." 

65. His mournfid right : His right to my grief, to my grieving for him. 



NIGHT III. 145 

Sorrow he more than causes ; he confounds ; 

For human sighs his rival strokes contend, TO 

And make distress distraction. O Philander ! 

What was thy fate ? a double fate to me ; 

Portent and pain ! a menace and a blow ! 

Like the black raven hov'ring o'er my peace, 

Not less a bird of omen than of prey. 75 

It call'd Narcissa long before her hour : 

It call'd her tender soul by break of bhss, 

From the first blossom, from the buds of joy ; 

Those few our noxious fate unblasted leaves 

In this inclement chme of human life. 80 

vSweet Harmonist ! and beautiful as sweet ! 
And young as beautiful ! and soft as young ! 

73. Portent and pain: Betokening, as well as inflicting sorrow. 

75. Bird of omen: An allusion to the ancient Roman practice of pretend- 
ing to foretell the future by observing the flight of such birds as the eagle 
and vulture, and the chattering and singing of others, as the owl, the 
crow (or raven), and the cock. 

The raven, strikingly sagacious and venerable in its appearance (we use 
the words of Mrs. Ellis), is still believed by the superstitious to be a bird 
of ill omen ; and much as we may be disposed to despise such prognostica- 
tions as the flight or the cry of different birds, there is something in the 
habits, but especially in the voice of the raven which gives it a strange and 
almost fearful character. It seems to hold no communion with the joyous 
spirits, to have no association with the happy scenes of earth, but leads a 
lengthened and unsocial life amongst the gloomy shades of the venerable 
forest, in the deep recesses of the pathless mountain, or on the rocky sum- 
mit of the beetling crag that overlooks the ocean's blue abyss ; and when it 
goes forth, with its sable pinions spread like the wings of a dark angel upon 
the wind, its hoarse and hollow croak echoes from rock to rock, as if telling, 
\i\ those dreary and appalling tones, of the fleshy feast to which it is hasten- 
ing, of the death-pangs of the mountain deer, of the cry of the perishing kid^ 
and of the bones of the shipwrecked seaman whitening in the surge. 

77. By break of bliss: A phrase of the same kind as break of day, and 
means, when her conjugal happiness was just commencing; in her bridal 
hour (150) . 

81. Sweet Harmonist : Or musician. The arrangement of the epithets ap- 
plied to Narcissa (81 — 84) constitutes a beautiful climax^ and, except in the 
last of these lines, well sustained. She is there compared to a bird (88) 

7 



146 THE COMPLAINT. 

And gay as soft ! and innocent as gay ! 

And tappy (if aught happy here) as good ! 

For fortune fond had built her nest on high. 85 

Like bu'ds, quite exquisite of note and phime, 

Transfix'd by fate, (^^■ho loves a lofty mark,) 

How'from the summit of the grove she fell, 

And left it unharmonious ! all its charm 

Extinguish'd in the v/onders of her song ; 90 

Her song still vibrates in my ravish'd ear. 

Still melting there, and v^ith voluptuous pain 

(0 to forget her !) thrilling through my heart ! 
Song, beauty, youth, love, virtue, joy ! tliis group 

Of bright ideas, flow'rs of paradise, 95 

As yet unforfcit ! in one blaze we bind. 

Kneel, and present it to the skies, as all 

We guess of heav'n ; and these were all her own ; 

And she was mme ; and I was — was — most blest — 

Gay title of the deepest misery ! 100 

\ As bodies grow more pond'rous robb'd of life, 
/ Good lost weighs more in grief than gain'd in joy. 

Like blossom'd trees o'erturn'd by vernal storm. 

Lovely in death the beauteous ruin lay ; 

And if in death still lovely, loveher there, 105 

Far loveher ! Pity swells the tide of love. V 

And will not the severe excuse a sigh ? 

Scorn the proud man that is ashamed to weep ; / 

Our tears indulged, indeed deserve our shame. 

transfixed by faU (death) , and falling from the summit of the grove that 
she had enchanted with the witchery of her song. 

96. As yet imforfeit : Before it was forfeited by the sin of Adam and Eve! 

100. Gay title, &c. : An expression of fehcity that has become indicative 
of the deepest misery ; his misery, now, resulted from the exquisite happi- 
ness he had derived from her varied endowments while she lived. 

102. Than gained, &c. : Than good which is gained weighs in joy. The 
contrasted ideas are, good lost — good gained ; in grief — in joy. 

105. There : In the skies (97). 

109-110. Our tears indulged, &c. : Our tears indulged to excess, under or- 



NIGHT III. 147 

Ye that e'er lost an angel, pity me ! 110 

Soon as the lustre languish'd iii her eye, 
Dawning a dimmer day on human sight, 
And on her cheek, the residence of spring, 
Pale omen sat, and scatter'd fears around 
On all that saw (and who could cease to gaze 115 

That once had seen ?) with haste, parental haste, 
I flew, I snatch'd her from the rigid north. 
Her native bed, on which bleak Boreas blew, 
And bore her nearer to the sun : the sun 
(As if the sun could envy) check'd his beam, 120 

Denied his wonted succour ; nor with more 
Regret beheld her drooping than the bells 
Of lihes ; fairest lilies, not so fair ! 

Queen lilies ! and ye painted populace ! 
Who dwell in fields, and lead ambrosial hves ! 125 

In morn and evening dew your beauties bathe. 
And drink the sun which gives your cheeks to glow. 
And out-blush (mine excepted) ev'ry fair ; 
You gladlier grew, ambitious of her hand, 
Which often cropt your odours, incense meet 130 

To thought so pure. Ye lovely fugitives ! 
Coeval race with man ; for man you smile ; 
Why not smile at him too ? You share, indeed, 

dinary bereavements, indeed deserve our shame ; but I have lost an angel, 
a friend above the standard of ordinary mortals. 

The chief fault of this part of the poem is the extravagance of the eulo- 
gium bestowed on Narcissa ; its disproportion to the merits of every human 
being. For example, (111-12) as her eye was becoming dimmed in death, it 
caused a sensible diminution of the light of day ; when borne southward the 
sun, as if in envy of her lustre, checked his beam (120) &c. 

118. Boreas : The north wind. 

119. Nearer to the sun : Southward, where the sun pours down a warmer 
day, and consequently seems nearer. 

122-3. Bells of lilies : Their shape resembles that of a bell. 

124. Ye painted populace^ &c, : A personification of the flowers. 

125. Ambrosial; pleasant. 
128. Mine : My fair friend. 



148 THE COMPLAINT. 

His sudden pass, but not his constant pain. 

So man is made ; nought ministers dehght, 135 

But what his glowing passions can engage ; 
And glowing passions, bent on aught below, 
Must, soon or late, Avith anguish turn the scale ; 
And anguish after rapture, how severe ! 

Rapture ! bold man! who tempts the wi-ath divine, 140 

By plucking fruit denied to mortal taste. 
Whilst here, presuming on the rights of Heav'n. 
For transport dost thou call on ev'ry hour, 
Lorenzo ? At thy friend's expense' be wise : 
Lean not on earth ; 'twill pierce thee to the heart ; 145 

A broken reed at best ; but oft a spear : 
On its sharp point peace bleeds, and hope expires. 

THE BURIAL OF NARCISSA. 

Turn, hopeless thought ! turn from her ; — Thought repell'd 
Resenting rallies, and wakes ev'ry wo. 

Snatch'd ere thy prime ! and in thy bridal hour ! 150 

And when kind fortune, -with thy lover, smiled ! 
And when high-flavour'd thy fresh op'ning joys ! 
And when bhnd man pronounced thy bhss complete ! 
And on a foreign shore, where strangers wept ! 
Strangers to thee, and, more surprising still, 155 

Strangei-s to kindness, wept. Their eyes let fall 
Inhuman tears ! strange tears ! that trickled down 
From marble hearts ! obdurate tenderness ! 
A tenderness that call'd them more severe, 
In spite of nature's soft persuasion steel'd ; 160 

Yf hile nature melted, superstition raved ! 
That mourn'd the dead, and this denied a grave. 

134. Sudden pass: Sudden passage — departure. You die as suddenly as 
man. 

157. Inhuman tears : Tears not human 

158. Marble hearts : Hearts hard as marble. 

162. That mourn'd, &c. : Nature mourned Narcissa, while superstition de- 



1 



NIGHT III. 149 

Theii* sighs incensed ; sighs foreign to the will ! 
Their will the tiger siick'd, outraged the storm : 
For oh ! the cursed ungodhness of zeal! 165 

While sinful flesh relented, spirit nui-sed 
In bhnd infallibihty's embrace, 
The sainted spirit petrified the breast. 
Denied the charity of dust to spread 

nied a grave. In spite of the influence of Roman Catholic prejudice against 
the accomplished woman, and of the superstition which repelled them from 
manifesting towards her remains the offices of a respectful burial, nature 
within them forced the tears of sorrow. She died at Lyons, in France, 
whither Dr. Young had taken her for the recovery of her health, and as she 
was a Protestant, he was obliged to bury her, very privately too, in a com- 
mon field, under cover of the darkness of night, having been refused the pri- 
vilege of interring her in the church-yard which was under the control of 
Popish superstition. 
He says accordingly, 

" "With pious sacrilege a grave I stole, &c."— 172-188. 

163. Incensed: Incensed me. 

164. Their will the tiger sucked : Was nursed by the tiger, or, without a 
figure, was fierce. 

165. The cursed ungodliness of zeal : The Roman ritual, used even at the 
present time, declares that schismatics and heretics are to be excluded from 
Christian burial. This exclusion extends to all who doubt any doctrine or 
precept of the Romish church ; no other form of Christian burial is permit- 
ted, and this prohibition is regarded as a mark of reprobation. 

A letter from Caraccas, in Spanish South America, dated in November, 
1825, mentions that a young Englishman died in the preceding month, and 
was buried in the church-yard with the customary Romish ceremonies, his 
friends having represented him to be a Roman Catholic, that they might not 
be obliged to witness his burial in a ditch, or some such place. But the 
real fact that he was a Protestant becoming known, the body was dug up, 
and found naked and mutilated in the church-yard ! The government, how- 
ever, interfered, and having shaken off some of their Romish prejudices, the 
body was again interred, and a piece of ground was ordered to be allotted to 
the English for their use as a burial-place. — Days of Queen Mary, p. 215. 

168. The sainted spirit: Spoken ironically. It was claimed to be a sainted 
spirit ; but not so regarded by our author. He says it petrified the heart, 
turned it into stone, destroyed the tender feelings — of course was not entitled 
to be seriously called a sainted or holy spirit. He had also referred to it 
(165) as the cursed ungodliness of zeal. 



150 THE COMPLAINT. 

O'er dust ! a charity their dogs enjoy. lYO 

"What could I do ? what succour ? what resource ? 

With j^ious sacrilege a grave I stole ; 

With impious piety that grave I wrong'd : 

Short in my duty, coward in my grief ! 

More hke her murderer than friend, I crept 175 

With soft suspended step, and muffled deep 

In midnight darkness, whisper'd my last sigh. 

I whisper'd what should echo through theh realms : 

Nor writ her name, whose tomb should pierce the skies. 

Presumptuous fear ! how durst I dread her foes, 180 

While natm-e's loudest dictates I obey'd ? 

Pardon necessity, blest shade ! of grief 

And indignation rival burets I pour'd ; 

Half execration mingled with my prayer ; 

Kindled at man, while I his God adored : 185 

Sore grudg'd the savage land her sacred dust ; 

Stamp'd the cursed soil ; and with humanity 

(Denied Narcissa) wish'd them all a grave. 

Glows my resentment into guilt ? what guilt 
Can equal violations of the dead ? 190 

The dead how sacred ! sacred is the dust 
Of this heav'n-labour'd form, erect, divine ! 
This heav'n-assumed, majestic, robe of earth 
He deign'd to wear, who hung the vast expanse 
With azure bright, and clothed the sun in gold. 195 

When ev'ry passion sleeps that can offend ; 
When strikes us ev'ry motive that can melt ; 
When man can wreak his rancour uncontroU'd, 
That strongest cm-b on insult and ill-will ; 

188. Wished them all a grave : That is, a decent burial, which had been 
denied to Narcissa. His hunaane wish could not have been entirely free 
irom a mixture of malevolence, as indicated by his stamping the cursed soil. 

194. He deigned to icear : Referring to the Son of God, who became incar- 
nate ; hence the human form is by the author called this heaven-assumed robe 
of earth. It was assumed by the Son of God, who not only had come from 
heaven but was heaven's king. 



NIGHT III. 151 

Then, spleen to dust ! the dust of innocence, 200 

An angel's dust ! This Lucifer transcends ; 
When he contended for the Patriarch's bones, 
'Twas not the strife of malice, but of pride ; 
The strife of pontiff pride, not pontiff gall. 

MAN, TO MAN THE SOREST ILL. 

Far less than this is shocking in a race 205 

Most wretched, but from streams of mutual love, 
And uncreated, but for love divine ; 
And, but for love divine, this moment lost. 
By fate resorb'd, and sunk in endless night. 

200, Spleen to dust : Ill-nature and spite shown to Narcissa's body in 
"being refused, with rage, a place in the Catholic church-yard, 

201. Lucifer: A name by which the devil or Satan is represented. The 
patriarch next spoken of is Moses, and the event alluded to is recorded in 
the Epistle of Jude, v. 9. The inspired writer refers, as is thought, to a 
tradition prevalent anaong the Jews, and w^hich he sanctions as containing 
an important truth, and one which related to the subject he was discussing. 
The contention was probably a contention of words, a dispute of some kind 
in relation to the body of Moses (from the Greek term used to express it), 
and did not relate to a contest of strength about the burial of Moses, as some 
have thought, and as our author views the matter in these lines. Jude is not 
responsible (as Mr, Barnes in his Notes remarks), for the opinion that the 
subject of dispute was about the burying of the body of Moses ; that Michael 
sought to bury it, and the devil endeavored to prevent it — the one in order 
that it might not be worshipped by the Israelites, and the other that it might 
be. All that Jude says is, that there was a dispute respecting the body cf 
Moses, 

206. Butfrom^ &c. : Except from, &c, : That is, had not streams of mu- 
tual love prevented from being most wretched. But for^ ^c.y would have 
been a better reading, and then would correspond with the phraseology in 
the next line : — and uncreated, but for love divine^ that is, would not even have 
been created had not divine love achieved the work ; and, except for the in- 
terposition of the same love, would this moment (be) lost. These things are 
mentioned to show the gross impropriety, and indecency, and criminality of 
the acts of hatred and violence perpetrated by the members of this race 
upon each other. 

209. Resorb'd : Swallowed up. 



152 THE COMPLAINT. 

Man hard of heart to man ! of horrid things 210 

Most horrid ! 'mid stupendous, highly strange ! 

Yet oft his courtesies are smoother wrongs ; 

Pride brandishes the favoui-s he confers, 

And contumehous his humanity : 

What then his vengeance ? Hear it not, ye stare ! 215 

And thou, pale moon ! tm'ri. paler at the sound ; 

Man is to man the sorest, surest ill. 

A previous blast foretells the rising storm ; 

O'erwhehning turrets threaten ere they fall ; 

Volcanoes bellow ere they disembogue ; 220 

Earth trembles ere her yawning jaws devour ; 

And smoke betrays the wide-consuming foe : 

Ruin fi'om man is most conceal'd when near, 

And sends the dreadful tidings in the blow. 

Is 'this the flight of fancy ? would it were ! 225 

Heav'n's Sovereign saves aU beings but himself 

That hideous sight, a naked human heart. 

Fired is the muse ? and let the muse be fii*ed : 
Who not inflamed, when what he speaks he feels, 
And in the nerve most tender, in his friends ? 230 

Shame to mankind ! Philander had his foes ; 
He felt the truths I sing, and I in him : 
But he nor I feel more. Past ills, Narcissa ! 
Are sunk in thee, thou recent wound of heart ! 
Which bleeds with other cares, with other pangs ; 235 

Pang's num'rous as the num'rous ills that swarm'd 
O'er thy distinguished fate, and clust'ring there. 
Thick as the locust on the land of Nile, 

220. Disembogue: Pour forth their con lents. 

233. But he no?- /, &c. : But neither he nor I feel them any longer in con- 
sequence of more aggravated wrong done to Narcissa. 

234. Wound of heart : The effect is here put for the cause or occasion. 
The expression means, author, or occasion, of the recetit wound of heart ; this 
was inflicted by the nwnerous ills that swarmed over her distinguished fate 

(237) , and, as the author most beautifully expresses the thought, made death 
more deadly, and more dark the grave. 



NIGHT III. 153 

Made death more deadly, and more dark the gi*ave, 

Reflect (if not forgot my touching tale) 240 

How was each circumstance with aspics arm'd ? 

An aspic each, and all an hydra wo. 

What strong Herculean virtue could suffice ? — 

Or is it virtue to be conquer'd here ? 

This hoary cheek a train of tears bedews, 245 

And each tear mourns its own distinct distress ; 

And each distress, distinctly mourn'd, demands 

Of grief still more, as heighten'd by the whole. 

A grief like this proprietors excludes ! 

^NTot friends alone such obsequies deplore ; 250 

They make mankind the mourner ; carry sighs 

Far as the fatal Fame can wing her way, 

And turn the gayest thought of gayest age 

Down the right channel, through the vale of death. 



241. jlspics : Asps — a small but exceedingly poisonous serpent found in 
Egypt, the bite of which is said to produce a speedy death without pain. 

242. ^11 an hydra wo: A wo that multiples itself like the heads of the 
fabled serpentine monster in the marsh of Lerna. It is represented as hav- 
ing had many heads, and as soon as one was cut off by any hostile hand it 
was supplied by another that started up, unless the wound was stopped by 
fire. By the virtue (that is, the valor) of the god Hercules (243) this mon- 
ster was killed, upon the application of firebrands to the wounds as the 
heads were cut off. Hence the term hydra^ by a figure of speech, has come 
to signify any manifold evil. 

252. Fatal Fame : Allusion seems here to be made to the heathen goddess 
Fame, who was regarded as the author and spreader of reports, not only bad 
but good. The epithet fatal is not easily interpreted. It may have here 
been applied to the goddess from the melancholy subject of the report which 
she bore concerning the death and burial of Narcissa. Whoever has read 
the -'Eneid of Virgil must have admired the personification of Fame, or 
Rumour, which is found in Book lY. 173—190. 

" Extemplo Libyse magnas it F.ima per urbes ; 
Tama malum quo non aliud velocius ullum : 
Mobilitate viget, vircsque acquirit eundo. 
Parva metu primo ; mox se attollit in auras, 
Ingrediturque solo, et caput inter nubila condit. 
Illam," (fee. 



154 THE COMPLAINT. 



THE VALE OF DEATH. 



The vale of death ! that hush'd Cimmerian vale, 255 

Where darkness brooding o'er nnfinish'd fates, 
With raven vnng incumbent, waits the day. 
(Dread day !) that interdicts all future change ! 
That subterranean world, that land of ruin ! 
Fit walk, Lorenzo, for proud human thought! 260 

There let my thought expatiate, and explore 
Balsamic truths and healing sentiments, 
Of all most wanted, and most w^elcome here. 
For gay Lorenzo's sake, and for thy own, 
My soul ; ' The fruits of dying friends sm-vey ; 265 

Expose the vain of hfe ; weigh hfe and death ; 
Give death his eulogy : thy fear subdue ; 
And labom- that &"st palm of noble minds, 
A manly scorn of terror from the tomb.' 

HARVEST GATHERED FROM THE GRAVE. 

This harvest reap from thy Narcissa's gi-ave. 270 

255. Cimmerian vale : Gloomy vale. The Cimmerii were a wandering 
people that occupied a portion of Tartary. The Greeks, it is said, obtained 
their first knowledge of these people from the Phoenicians, w^ho, wishing to 
discourage the Grecian traders from visiting them, originated some hard sto- 
ries about the deep gloom or perpetual darkness which rested upon the Cim- 
merian territory, and some other formidable circumstances. 

Another version of the matter is, that the Cimmerians lived in caves 
under ground, and never saw the light of the sun. — Homer's Odys. XI. 14. 

262. Balsamic truths : Consolatory, soothing, health-restoring truths. 

265-6. The fruits^ &c. : Survey the advantages that may accrue from 
dying friends. Expose the vain of life : uncover the vanity of life. 

268. Labour, &c. : Labour (to secure) that first victory of noble mmds (of 
which the palm was an honorable testimonial.) Theie is an allusion to the 
chariot-race among the Greeks, in which the victor was presented with a 
palm-branch, which he carried in his hand. The next line states what the 
victory to be achieved is. 



NIGHT III. 



155 



As poets feign'd, from Ajax' streaming blood 

Ai'ose, with gTief inscrib'd, a mom-Bful flow'r, 

Let wisdom blossom from my mortal wound. 

And &st, of dying friends ; what fr-uit fr-om these ? 

It brings us more than triple aid ; an aid 275 

To chase our thoughtlessness, fear, pride, and guilt. 

Om- dying friends come o'er us, hke a cloud, 

To damp our brainless ardom-s, and abate 

That glare of hfe which often bhnds the wise. 

Our dying friends are pioneers, to smooth 280 

Our rugged paths to death ; to break those bars 

Of terror and abhorrence nature throws 

Cross our obstructed way, and thus to make 

"Welcome, as safe, our port from ev'ry storm. 

Each friend by fate snatch'd from us is a plume 285 

Pluck'd from the wing of human vanity, 

Which makes us stoop fr'om om- aerial heights, 

And damp'd with omen of our own decease, 

On di-ooping pinions of ambition lower'd, 

Just skim earth's surface ere we break it up, 290 

O'er putrid earth to scratch a httle dust 

And save the world a nuisance. Smitten friends 

Ai'e angels, sent on errands full of love ; 

271. From Ajax' streaming bloody &c. : Next to Achilles, Ajax was the 
bravest and most impetuous of the Greeks engaged in the Trojan war. He 
committed suicide by stabbing himself to the heart. The blood that flowed 
from the wound is fabled to have produced the flower hyacinthus, of a red 
color, on the petal of which lines may be traced which resemble in form the 
first two letters of his name in the Greek character. The flower is not the 
ordinary hyacinth, but the " Imperial Mastagon." 

273. My mortal ivound : The wound he had received in the loss of Nar- 
cissa. 

278 Brainless ardours : Thoughtless, unreasonable excitements of passion. 
To damp these is the first advantage we should derive from the death of 
friends. The second advantage is, to divest of its terribleness the pathway 
of Death (280-84). The third is the abatement of human pride (285-292). 
TYiQ fourth is a change of character (294-302), the revolution in our hearts. 

288. Omeii : The sign, or indication. 



156 THE COMPLAINT. 

For US they languish, and for us they die : 

And shall they languish, shall they die, in vain ? 295 

Ungrateful, shall we grieve their hov'ring shades, 

Which wait the revolution in our hearts ? 

Shall we disdain their silent, soft, address, 

Then* posthumous advice, and pious pray'r ? 

Senseless, as herds that graze their hallow'd graves, 300 

Tread under foot their agonies and groans ; 

Frustrate theh anguish, and destroy their deaths ? 

Lorenzo ! no ; the thought of death indulge ; 
Give it its wholesome empire ! let it reign, 
That kind chastiser of thy soul in joy ; 305 

Its reign will spread thy glorious conquests far, 
And still the tumults of thy ruffled breast. 
Auspicious era ! golden days begin ! 
The thought of death shall, like a god, insphe. 
And why not think on death ? Is hfe the theme 310 

Of ev'ry thought ? and wish of ev'ry hour ? 
And song of ev'ry joy ? Surprising truth ! 
The beaten spaniel's fondness not so strange. 
To wave the num'rous ills that seize on Hfe 
As their own property, then* lawful prey ; 315 

Ere man has measured half his weary stage, 
His luxm-ies have left him no reserve, 
No maiden relishes, unbroach'd delights ; 
On cold-served repetitions he subsists, 

And in the tasteless present chews the past ; 320 

Disgusted chews, and scarce can swallow down. 
Like lavish ancestors, his earher years 
Have disinherited his future hours, 
Which starve on orts, and glean their former field. 

THE THOUGHT OF LIVING ALWAYS ON EARTH, REVOLTING. 

Live here, Lorenzo ! — shocking thought ! 325 

302. Destroy their deaths: Destroy the profit, or salutary tendency, pf their 
deaths. 

324. Orts : Fragnments, or refuse. 



NIGHT III. 



157 



So shocking, they who wish disown it too ; 

Disown from shame what they fi'om folly crave. 

Live ever in the womb, nor see the light ! 

For what live ever here ? — with lab'ring step 

To tread our former footsteps ? pace the round 330 

Eternal ? to chmb hfe's worn heavy wheel 

Which di'aws up nothing new ? to beat, and beat 

The beaten track ? to bid each wi-etched day 

The former mock ? to sm-feit on the same, 

And yawn our joys ? or thank a misery 335 

For change, though sad ! to see what we have seen ? 

Hear, till unheard, the same old slabber'd tale ? 

To taste the tasted, and at each return 

Less tasteful ? o'er our palates to decant 

Another \dntage ? strain a flatter year, 340 

Through loaded vessels, and a laxer tone ? 

Crazy machines to grind earth's wasted fruits ! 

HI ground, and worse concocted ! load, not hfe ! 

The rational foul kennels of excess ! 

Still-streaming thoroughfares of dull debauch ! 345 

Trembhng each gulp, lest death should snatch the bowl. 

Such of om* fine ones is the wish refined ! 
So would they have it : elegant desire ! 



332. Nothing new, Sfc. : That is, in the way of pleasure. The allusion 
here to a wheel is rather obscure, but it probably refers to a kind of wheel 
which Philo speaks of as used in Egypt for elevating the waters of the Nile 
to the high grounds which its annual inundations failed to reach. The wheel 
was constructed with steps, by treading upon which a man was enabled to 
turn the wheel and elevate water to the required level. The process must 
have been fatiguing, and the wheel would become worn, and it would be a 
heavy wheel, which draws up nothing new. The author has selected this ma- 
chine and its effects, as a representation of the monotonous and laborious 
loutine of a life of fashionable indulgences and dissipations 

335- Yawn our Joys : Yawn over our joys. 

340. Strain aflutter year, &c. : Force the products of a less relished year 
through loaded vessels of the body. 

343. Load : Used here as a noun. 



i'\ 



158 THE COMPLAINT. 

Why not imnte the bellowing stalls and wilds ? 

But such examples might their riot awe. 350 

Through want of virtue, that is, want of thought, 

(Tho' on bright thought they father all theu- flights) 

To what are they reduced ? to love and hate 

The same vain world ; to censure and espouse 

This painted shrew of hfe, who calls them fool 355 

Each moment of each day ; to flatter bad 

Through dread of worse ; to cling to this rude rock, 

Barren, to them, of good, and sharp vdth ills. 

And hourly blacken'd vdth impending storms, 

And infamous for wi'ecks of human hope — 360 

Scar'd at the gloomy gulf that yawns beneath. 

Such are their triumphs ! such theu* pangs of joy ! 

'Tis time, high time, to shift this dismal scene. 
This hugg'd, this hideous state, what art can cure ? 
One only ; but that one what all may reach ; 365 

Virtue — she, wonder-working goddess ! charms 
That rock to bloom, and tames the painted shrew ; 
And, what will more sm*prise, Lorenzo ! gives 
To life's sick nauseous iteration, change ; 

And straitens nature's circle to a hue. 370 

Believ'st thou this, Lorenzo ! lend an ear, 
A patient ear, thou'lt blush to disbelieve. 

A languid leaden iteration reigns. 
And ever must, o'er those whose joys are joys 
Of sight, smell, taste. The cuckoo-seasons sing 3*75 

349. The bellowing stalls and wilds : Here figuratively put for the animals 
that bellow in stalls and deserts. 

355. This painted shrew of life : Life is here compared to an ill-natured, 
fretful, vexatious woman, decked in gaudy and misplaced ornaments. It is 
next compared to a rude, barren rock (357-58) . 

356. To flatter bad: To speak too favorably of what is bad in their con- 
dition. 

367. Tames the painted shrew: The idea may have been suggested to our 
author by Shakspeare's play of " The Taming of the Shrew." 
369. Iteration: Repetition of the same experiences. 
375. The cuckoo-seasons sing^ &c. : " With the cuckoo," says Mrs. Ellis, 



NIGHT III. 159 

The same dull note to such as nothing prize, 

But what those seasons, from the teeming earth, 

To doating sense indulge. But nobler minds, 

Which relish fruits unripen'd by the sun, 

Make their days various, various as the dyes 380 

On the dove's neck, which wanton in his rays. 

On minds of dove-hke innocence possess'd. 

On hghten'd minds that bask in virtue's beams, 

Nothing hangs tedious, nothing old revolves 

In that for which they long, for which they live. 385 

Their glorious efforts, wing'd with heavenly hope. 

Each rising morning sees still higher rise ; 

Each bounteous dawn its novelty presents 

To worth matm-ing, new strength, lustre, fame ; 

While nature's circle, hke a chariot- wheel 390 

Rolling beneath their elevated aims, 

Makes their fair prospect faii-er ev'ry hour ; 

Advancing \drtue in a line to bliss ; 

" our associations are in some respects the same as with the swallow (with 
which we associate the ever-cheering idea of returning summer) except that 
we are in the habit of regarding it simply as a voice ; and what a voice ! 
How calm, and clear, and rich ! How full of all that can be told of the end- 
less profusion of summer charms! — of the hawthorn, in its scented bloom, of 
the blossoms of the apple, and the silvery waving of the fresh green corn, of 
the cowslip in the meadow, and the wild rose by the woodland path ; and 
last, but not least in its poetical beauty, of the springing up of the meek-eyed 
daisy, to welcome the foot of the traveller upon the soft and grassy turf" 

By cuckoo- seasons the 'author seems to designate those brief seasons of the 
year during which this bird sojourned in the northerly and middle parts of 
Europe. It first appears in England about the middle of April, takes its 
leave about the first of July, and makes its way to Africa. It returns regu- 
larly with the spring, and from some dead tree or branch the male cuckoo 
pours forth in dull, unvarying monotony the sounds of cuckoo — cuckoo. This 
explains our author's language — sing the same dull note^ and admirably illus- 
trates the languid^ leaden iteration, or dull repetition, of the joys that are de- 
rived from " sight, smell, taste," 

379. Fruits unripen'd by the sun : Fruits not produced in the earth, under 
the influence of the sun's heat and light ; fruits not such as are intended foi 
the palate and to please the bodily taste. 
383, Lighten' d: Enlightened. 



160 THE COMPLAINT. 

Virtue whicli Christian motives best inspire ! 

And bliss, which Christian schemes alone ensm'e ! 395 



LIFE VALUABLE AS A MEANS ; NOT AS AN END. 

And shall we then, for virtue's sake, commence 
Apostates ? and turn infidels for joy ? 
A truth it is, few doubt, but fewer trust, 
* He sins against this life, who slights the next.' 
"What is this life ? how few their fav'rite know ! 400 

Fond in the dark, and blind in our embrace, 
By passionately loving life, we make 
Loved hfe unlovely, hugging her to death. 
We give to time eternity's regard. 

And, dreaming, take our passage for our port. 405 

Life has no value as an end, but means ; 
An end deplorable ! a means divine ! 
When 'tis our all, 'tis nothing ; worse than nought ; 
A nest of pains ; when held as nothing, much. 
Like some fair hum'iists, hfe is most enjoy'd 410 

When courted least ; most worth, when disesteem'd ; 
Then 'tis the seat of comfort, rich in peace ; 
In prospect richer far ; important ! avvful ! 
Not to be mention'd but with shouts of praise ! 
Not to be thought on but with tides of joy ! 415 

The mighty basis of eternal bliss ! 

Where now the barren rock ? the painted shrew ? 
Where now, Lorenzo, life's eternal round ? 
Have I not made my triple promise good ? 

397. For joy: For the sake of gaining joy, 

404, Eternityh regard : The regard due to eternity. 

405. Port: Harbor. 

409. When held as nothings &c. : When regarded as nothing, it becomes a 
means of great happiness (416). 

417-18. The barren rock, &c. : Referring to lines 358, 355, 364. 

419. Triple promise : A promise to prove, (1) that virtue charms the bar- 



NIGHT III. 161 

Vain is the world ; but only to the vain. 420 

To what compare we then this varying scene, 

Whose worth ambiguous rises and dechnes, 

Waxes and wanes ? (In all, propitious Night 

Assists me here) compare it to the moon ; 

Dark in herself, and indigent ; but rich 425 

In borrow'd lustre from a higher sphere. 

When gross guilt interposes, lab'ring earth, 

O'ershadow'd, mourns a deep echpse of joy ; 

Her jo3'"s, at brightest, pallid to that font 

Of full effulgent glory whence they flow. 430 

LIFE AND DEATH COMPARED. 

Nor is that glory distant. O Lorenzo, 
A good man and an angel ! these between 
How thin the barrier ! what divides their fate ? 
Perhaps a moment, or perhaps a year ; 

Or if an age, it is a moment still ; 435 

A moment, or eternity's forgot. 
Then be what once they were who now are gods ; 
Be what Philander was, and claim the skies. 
Starts timid nature at the gloomy pass ? 
The soft transition call it, and be cheer'd. 440 

Such it is often, and why not to thee ? 
To hope the best is pious, brave, and wise ; 
And may itself procure what it presumes. 
Life is much flatter'd, death is much traduced ; 
Compare the rivals, and the kinder crown. 445 

ren rock to bloom ; (2) tames the painted shrew ; and (3) gives an agreeable 
change to the dull monotony of life (366 — 370). 

422. Worth ambiguous : Worth of a changeful nature. 

426. Sphere: Sun. 

429 Pallid to that font : That is, when compared to that font (the sun). 

436. Or: Unless. 

445. The kinder crown : Honor that one of the two which to us is the 
more kind. 



162 THE COMPLAINT. 

* Strange competition !'-^True, Lorenzo ! strange ! 
So little life can cast into tlie scale. 

Life makes the soul dependent on the dust ; 
Death gives her wings to mount above the spheres. 
Thro' chinks, styled organs, dim hfe peeps at light ; 450 

Death bursts th' involving cloud, and all is day ; 
All eye, all ear, the disembodied pow'r. 
Death has feign'd evols nature shall not feel ; 
Life, ills substantial, wisdom cannot shun. 
Is not the mighty mind, that son of Heav'n, 455 

By tyrant Life dethroned, imprison' d, pain'd ? 
By death enlarged, ennobled, deified ? 
Death but entombs the body, life the soul. 

' Is death then guiltless ? how he marks his way 
With dreadful waste of what deserves to shine ! 460 

Ai*t, genius, fortune, elevated pow'r ; 
With various lustres these hght up the world, 
W^hich death puts out, and darkens human race.' 
I grant, Lorenzo, this indictment just : 

The sage, peer, potentate, king, conqueror ! 465 

Death humbles these ; more barb'rous life the man. 
Life is the triumph of our mould'ring clay ; 
Death of the spirit infinite ! divine ! 
Death has no dread but what frail hfe imparts ; 
Nor life true joy but what kind death improves. 4Y0 

No bhss has life to boast, till death can give 
Far greater. Life's a debtor to the grave ; 
Dark lattice ! letting in eternal day ! 

Lorenzo, blush at fondness for a life 
Which sends celestial souls on errands vile, 475 

450. Life: Is here personified ; so also in {A5Q). 

452. Poiv^r: Soul. 

459. 7s Death then guiltless. ? Lorenzo here interposes an objection, extend- 
ing to 463 inclusive. 

467-68. The body triumphs in this life ; the soul has its triumph at 
death. 



NIGHT III. 163 

To cater for the sense, and serve at boards 
Where ev'ry ranger of the wilds, perhaps 
Each reptile, justly claims our upper hand. 
Luxui-ious feast ! a soul, a soul immortal, 
In all the dainties of a brute bemu-ed ! 480 

Lorenzo, blush at terror for a death 
Which gives thee to repose in festive bow'rs, 
Where nectars sparkle, angels minister. 
And more than angels share, and raise, and crown, 
And eternize, the bhth, bloom, bursts of bliss. 485 

What need I more ? O death, the palm is thine. 
Then welcome, death ! thy dreaded harbingei-s, 
Age and disease ; disease, though long my guest, 
That plucks my nerves, those tender strings of life ; 
Which, pluck'd a Utile more, will toll the bell 490 

That calls my few fiiends to my funeral ; 
Where feeble nature drops, perhaps, a tear. 
While reason and rehgion, better taught. 
Congratulate the dead, and crown his tomb 

476. To cater ^ &c. : To provide for the gratification of sense. The author 
is here illustrating his position in (467) . 

484. More than angels : More beings than angels ; that is, where men as 
well as angels share, &c. 

486. Need I more : Need I say nnore. 

487. Then u-elcome, death : John Foster, in a letter to a friend, thus writes : 
" I congratulate you and myself that life is passing fast away. What a su- 
perlatively grand and consoling idea is that of Death ! Without this radiant 
idea, this delightful morning star, indicating that the luminary of eternity 
is going to rise, life would to my view darken into midnight melancholy. 
Oh ! the expectation of living here^ and living thus always, would be indeed 
a prospect of overwhelming despair. But thanks to that decree that dooms 
us to die : thanks to that gospel which opens the vision to an endless life ; 
and thanks, above all, to that Saviour-friend who has promised to conduct 
all the faithful through the sacred trance of death into scenes of Paradise and 
everlasting delight." 

490. Will toll the bell : Not a very happy figure in its connexion, since the 
nerves of the poet, enfeebled by disease, are described as the strings which 
toll the bell. We learn from this passage that in advanced years he had but 
few friends who would, in his judgment, at least, lament his decease. 



164 THE COMPLAINT. 

Witli wreath triiimpliant ! Death is victory ; 495 

It binds in chains the raging ills of life : 

Lnst and ambition, wrath and avarice, 

Dragg'd at his chariot-wheel, applaud his pow'r. 

That ills corrosive, cares importunate. 

Are not immortal too, death, is thine. 600 

Our day of dissolution ! — name it right, 

'Tis our great pay-day : 'tis our harvest, rich 

And ripe. What tho' the sickle, sometimes keen, 

Just scars us as we reap the golden grain ? 

More than thy balm, Gilead ! heals the woimd. 505 

Birth's feeble cry, and death's deep dismal gi*oan, 

Are slender tributes low-tax'd nature pays 

For mighty gain ; the gain of each a life ! 

But ! the last the former so transcends. 

Life dies, compared; life hves beyond the grave. 510 

SPLENDID EULOGIUM ON DEATH. 

And feel I, death, no joy from thought of thee ? 
Death, the great counsellor, who man inspires 
With every nobler thought and fairer deed ! 
Death, the deliverer, who rescues man ! 

Death, the re warder, who the rescued crowns ! 515 

Death, that absolves my birth, a curse without it ! 
Rich death, that reahzes all my cares, 

498. Bragged at his chariot-tvheel : An allusion to the triumphal procession 
in honor of a Roman general for a successful campaign, when distinguished 
captives were exhibited in this degraded position. 

500. Is thine : Ts to be ascribed to thee — is thy work. 

502- Pay-day : Day of receiving pay. 

508. The gain of each a life : The cry at birth (506) gains this life; the 
groan at death gains the life immortal. 

510. Life dies, compared : Compared with the life immortal, this life dies, is 
no longer worthy to be called life. 

516. jihsolves my birth: Accomplishes the design of my birth, which, 
without the event of death, would be (at least comparatively) a curse. 



NIGHT III. 165 

Toils, vii'tues, hopes ; witliout it a chimera ! 

Death, of all pam the period, not of joy ; 

Joy's source and subject still subsist unhurt ; 520 

One in my soul, and one in her great she, 

Though the four winds were waning for my dust. 

Yes, and from winds and waves, and central night, 

Though prison'd there, my dust too I reclaim, 

(To dust when drop proud Nature's proudest spheres) 525 

And hve entire. Death is the crown of life : 

Were death denied, poor man would hve in vain : 

Were death denied, to hve would not be life : 

Were death denied, e'en fools would wish to die 

Death wounds to cure ; we fall, we rise, we reign ! 530 

Spring from our fetters, fasten m the skies. 

Where blooming Eden withers in our sight ; 

Death gives us more than was in Eden lost. 

This king of terrors is the prince of peace. 

When shall I die to vanity, pain, death ? 535 

When shall I die ? — when shall I hve for ever ? 

518. A chimera: A fanciful, unreal, incongruous affair. The original ap- 
plication of this word is to a fabulous monster, composed of a dragon, a goat, 
and a lion united, forming respectively the hinder parts, the middle of the 
body, and the fore parts. It had the heads of all three, which were continu- 
ally vomiting flames. The modern import of this word is very legiti- 
mately derived from the strange composition of such an animal. 

519. The period : Termination, or terminating process. 
524. Reclaim : Claim again as my own. 

526. Live entire : Live with soul and body re-united. 

530. Death wounds to cure : How admirable, says Dr. Thomas Brown, is 
that goodness which knows so well how to adapt to each other feelings that 
are opposite ; which gives to man a love of life enough to reconcile him 
without an effort to the earth which is to be the scene of his exertions, and 
which at the same time gives those purer and more glorious wishes which 
make him ready to part with the very life which he loved. 

535. Die to vanity^ &c. : Be released from these ; or, become indifferent to 
them. 

536. The questions in this line are to be regarded as of the sam.e import. 



NIGHT IV. 



THE CHRISTIAN TRIUMPH, 

CONTAINING THE ONLY CURE FOR THE FEAR OF DEATH ; AND PROPER 
SENTIMENTS OF HEART ON THAT INESTIMABLE BLESSING. 



SnBrritoi tn tjiB InnnurulilB 3Kt, <^nrto. 



A MUCH-INDEBTED musG, O Yorke ! intrudes. 
Amid the smiles of fortune and of youth, 
Thine ear is patient of a serious song. 
How deep implanted in the breast of man 
The dread of death ! I sing its sov'reign cure. 5 

CURE FOR THE FEAR OF DEATH. 

Why start at death ? where is he ? death arrived 
Is past : not come, or gone ; he's never here. 
Ere hope, sensation fails ; black-boding man 
Receives, not suffei's, death's tremendous blow. 

1. Muse : A classical expression derived from the fable of certain god- 
desses that were supposed to preside over poetry and the other Hberal arts. 
When stripped of figure, it means here the poet himself. 

7. Not come^ or gone : Either he is not come, or he is gone. 



NIGHT IV. 167 

The knell, the shroud, the mattock, and the grave ; 10 

The deep damp vault, the darkness, and the worm ; 

These are the bugbears of a winter's eve, 

The terrors of the living, not the dead. 

Imagination's fool, and error's wi-etch, 

Man makes a death which nature never made ; 15 

Then on the point of his own fancy falls. 

And feels a thousand deaths in fearing one. 

But were death frightful, what has age to fear 
If prudent ; age should meet the friendly foe, 
And shelter in his hospitable gloom. 20 

I scarce can meet a monument but holds 
My younger ; ev'ry date cries — ' Come away.' 
And what recalls me ? Look the world around. 
And tell me what : the wisest cannot tell. 
Should any born of woman give his thought 25 

Full range on just dislike's unbounded field ; 
Of things, the vanity : of men, the flaws ; 
Flaws in the best ; the many, flaw all o'er ; 
As leopards spotted, or as Ethiops dark ; 
Vivacious ill ; good dying immature ; 30 

(How immature, ISTarcissa's marble tells !) 
And at its death bequeathing endless pain ; 
His heart, though bold, would sicken at the sight 
And spend itself in sighs for future scenes. 

DISADVANTAGES OF LIVING TOO LONG. 

But grant to life (and just it is to grant 35 

14. Fool and wretch are in apposition with man (15) and relate to him. 

16. Fanqj is here figuratively represented as a sword. 

20. Shelter : Take shelter. 

22. My yownger : A younger person than myself. 

30. Vivacious ill: Long-lived ill. Ill and ^ooc? are abstract names used 
here for concrete, that is, for evil and good persons, as is evident from the 
next line. 

32. Pain : That is, to survivors. 



168 THE COMPLAINT. 

To lucky life) some perquisites of joy ; 

A time there is, when, like a thrice-told tale, 

Long-rifled life of sweet can yield no more, 

But from our comment on the comedy. 

Pleasing reflections on parts well sustain' d, 40 

Or purpos'd emendations where we fail'd, 

Or hopes of plaudits from our candid Judge, 

When, on then* exit, souls are bid unrobe. 

Toss Fortune back her tinsel and her plume, 

And drop this mask of flesh behind the scene. 45 

With me that time is come ; my world is dead ; 
A new world rises, and new manners reign. 
Foreign comedians, a spruce band ! arrive 
To push me from the scene, or hiss me there. 
What a pert race starts up ! the strangei-s gaze, 50 

And I at them ; my neighbour is unknowTi ; 
Nor that the worst. Ah me ! the dii'e effect 
Of loit'ring here, of death defrauded long ; 
Of old so gracious (and let that suffice) 
My veiy master knows me not. 55 

Shall I dare say, pecuHar is the fate ? 
I've been so long remember'd, I'm forgot. 
An object ever pressing dims the sight. 
And hides behind its ardour to be seen. 

44. Toss Fortime back : Toss back to Fortune her, &c. Fortune, or chance, 
was deified by the ancient Pagans and worshipped. Hence, according to 
modern use, the word is figuratively used to denote a power which is sup- 
posed to distribute the various allotments of life according to her own hu- 
mour, or in rather an arbitrary manner. Of course it is not, upon the page 
of a Christian poet, to be strictly interpreted, but the phrase quoted simply 
means ; toss back the gaudy ornaments that have been granted you. 

46. My world is dead: The world is to me as if dead, my connexion with 
it is virtually at an end. The poet here furnishes rather a melancholy 
sketch of his own later days, under the idea of a theatrical scene. 

55. Master: Probably allusion is made to the king — George II., of 
Great Britain. It will be seen that he had depended not a little upon court 
favor and preferments ; that he had studied to ingratiate himself with the 
great and the titled of Britain's sons (67) . 



NIGHT IV. 169 

When in his courtiers' ears I pour my plaint, 60 

They drink it as the nectar of the great, 
And squeeze my hand, and beg me come to-morrow ! 
Refusal ! canst thou wear a smoother form ? 

Indulge me, nor conceive I drop my theme ; 
Who cheapens life, abates the fear of death. 65 

Twice told the period spent on stubborn Troy. 
Court-favour, yet untaken, I besiege ; 
Ambition's ill-judged effort to be rich. 
Alas I ambition makes my little less, 

Imbitt'ring the possess'd. Why wish for more ? 70 

Wishing, of all employments, is the worst ! 
Philosophy's reverse, and health's decay ! 
Were I as plump as stall'd Theology, 
Wishing would waste me to this shade again. 
Were I as wealthy as a South-sea dream, Y5 

66. Allusion to the ten years' war between the city of ancient Troy, and 
the states of Greece. Court favor is here spoken of under the figure of a 
besieged town. 

73. StaWd Theology : A well-fed churchman. 

75. A South-sea dream : Reference is here made to the South-Sea Scheme 
which was projected by Sir John Blount in 1719, as the result of the exces- 
sive profits which for a few years had been reaped, though not honourably, 
by the South-Sea Company. This scheme professed to be designed to ena- 
ble Great Britaia to pay off her national debt by its being assumed by the 
South-Sea Company, who, in consequence, were empowered by Parliament 
to raise the requisite funds by various means ; and particularly by opening 
books of subscription, and granting annuities to such public creditors as 
should exchange the security of the croion for that of the South- Sea Company^ 
with the emoluments which might result from their commerce. 

This of course occasioned a prodigious rise in the value or price of the 
stock of that company. It soon reached four times its original price, and 
certain unfounded reports were originated which favoured the iniquitous 
speculation, so that, upon opening the subscription books, persons of all 
ranks, and from all parts of the kingdom, crowded to the South-Sea house 
to become stockholders. Many persons speculated upon the stock thus sub- 
scribed and realized about ten times what they paid for it- New manufac- 
turing companies, and many absurd projects were started by unprincipled 
individuals taking advantage of the infatuation that had seized all classes, 
who were expecting by this South- Sea scheme to make a fortune. 



170 THE COMPLAINT. 

Wisliing is an expedient to be jDoor. 
Wishing, that constant hectic of a fool, 
Caught at a conrt, pni-g'd off by purer an- 
And simpler diet, gifts of rural hfe ! 

Blest be that hand di^dne, which gently laid 80 

My heart at rest beneath this humble shed. 
The world's a stately bark, on dangerous seas 
With pleasure seen, but boarded at our peril : 
Here, on a single plank, thrown safe ashore, 
I hear the tumult of the distant throng 85 

As that of seas remote, or dying storms. 
And meditate on scenes more silent still ; 
Pm*sue my theme, and fight the fear of death. 
Here, like a shepherd gazing from his hut. 
Touching his reed, or leaning on his staff, 90 

Eager ambition's fiery chase I see ; 
I see the circhng hunt of noisy men 
Bm^st law's enclosm'e, leap the mounds of right, 
Pm*suing, and pui-sued, each other's prey ; 
As wolves for rapine, as the fox for wiles, 95 

"At length, however," says Dr. Russell, the historian, "to use the phrase 
of the times, the bubble began to burst. It was discovered that such as were 
thought to be in the secret had disposed of all their stock, while the tide 
was at its height. A universal alarm was spread. Every one wanted to 
sell, and nobody to buy, except at a very reduced price. The South-Sea 
stock fell as rapidly as it had risen, and to the lowest ebb : so that in a little 
time nothing was to be seen of this bewitching scheme but the direful ef- 
fects of its violence — the wreck of private fortunes, and the bankruptcy of 
merchants and trading companies ! nor anything to be heard but the ravings 
of disappointed ambition, the execrations of beggared avarice, the pathetic 
wailings of innocent credulity, the grief of unexpected poverty, or the fran- 
tic bowlings of despair. The timely interposition and steady wisdom of 
Parliament only could have prevented a general bankruptcy." — Modern 
Europe, vol. ii. 397, 

The above graphic picture is scarcely too high colored for an exact por- 
traiture of a similar mania, attended with similar disastrous effects, which 
prevailed in the United States in 1836 and 1837. relative to speculations in 
land and the building of towns. 

77. Hectic : Consumptive fever. 



NIGHT IV. 1'71 

Till death, that mighty hunter, earths them all. 

Why all this toil for triumphs of an hour ? "^^^ 
What though we wade in wealth or soar in fame,\ 
Earth's highest station ends in * Here he hes ;' | 
And ' Dust to dust,' concludes her noblest song. / 100 

If this song lives, posterity shall know 
One, though in Britain born, with courtiers bred, 
Who thought e'en gold might come a day too late, 
Nor on his subtle death-bed plann'd his scheme 
For future vacancies in the church or state, 105 

Some avocation deeming it — to die ; 
Unbit by rage canine of dying rich ; 
Guilt's blunder ! and the loudest laugh of Hell. 

ADDRESS TO THE AGED. 

O my coevals ! remnants of yourselves ! 
Poor human ruins tottering o'er the grave ! 110 

Shall we, shall aged men, like aged trees, 
Strike deeper their vile root, and closer cling, 
Still more enamour'd of this wretched soil ? 
Shall our pale wither'd hands be still stretch'd out, 
Trembhng, at once, with eagerness and age ? 115 

With av'rice, and convulsions, gi-asping hard ? / 
Grasping at air ! for what has earth beside ? / 
Man wants but httle, nor that little long : / 
How soon must he resign his very dust, 

Which frugal nature lent him for an hour ! 120 

Years unexperienced rush on numerous ills ; 
And soon as man, expert from time, has found 
96. Earths : Brings down to the earth. 

107. Unbit by rage canine : Not bitten by canine madness ; not affected by 
such a rage, for dying rich, as the mad dog exhibits in the disease of hydro- 
phobia. 

109. O my coevals : The poet in his old age here most tenderly and elo- 
quently addresses his companions in years. 

122. Expert from time: Taught by time, or by the events of time, has 
found the key, 8fc. : As soon as he has learned to enjoy life, or, rather, to 
perform its duties and avoid its snares, he dies. 



172 THE COMPLAINT. 

The key of life, it opes tlie gates of death. 

When in this vale of years I backward look, 
And miss such numbers, numbers too, of such, 125 

Firmer in health, and greener in their age. 
And stricter on their guard, and fitter far 
To play hfe's subtle game, I scarce beheve 
I still survive. And am I fond of life. 

Who scarce can think it possible I hve ? 130 

Ahve by miracle ! or, what is next, 
Ahve by Mead 1 if I am still alive. 
Who long have buried what gives life to hve, 
Firmness of nerve, and energy of thought. 
Life's lee is not more shallow than impure 135 

And vapid : sense and reason show the door. 
Call for my bier, and point me to the dust. 

RESIGNATION TO THE GREAT ARBITER OF LIFE AND DEATH. 

thou great Arbiter of hfe and death ! 
.IS^ature's immortal, immaterial sun 1 

W^hose aU-prolific beam late call'd me forth 140 

From darkness, teeming darkness, where I lay 
The worm's inferior ; and, in rank, beneath 
The dust I tread on ; high to bear my brow, 
To drink the spirit of the golden day, 

And triumph in existence ; and couldst know 145 

No motive but my bhss ; and hast ordain'd 
A rise in blessing ! with the Patriarch's joy 
Thy call I follow to the land unknown : 
I trust in thee, and know in whom I trust : 
Or hfe or death is equal ; neithei- weighs ; 150 

132. Mead : The author's physician. 

133. What gives life to live : What grants to life the power to Hve ; what 
grants to life its very existence, namely, firmness of nerve, and energy of 
thought. 

135. Life's lee is vapid: Life, in its advanced stages, is here compared to 
an old empty wine cask, the lee, dreg or sediment in which is shallow, &c. 
150. Weighs : Preponderates. 



NIGHT IV. 



173 



All weight in this — let me live to thee. 

Though Nature's terrors thus may be represt, 
Still frowns grim death ; guilt points the tyrant's spear. 
And whence all human guilt ? From death forgot. 
Ah me ! too long I set at nought the swarm 155 

Of friendly warnings which around me flew, 
And smiled unsmitten. Small my cause to smile ; 
Death's admonitions, like shafts upwards shot, 
More dreadful by delay, the longer ere 

They strike our hearts, the deeper is their wound. 160 

O think how deep, Lorenzo ! here it stings ; 
Who can appease its anguish ? how it burns ! 
What hand the barb'd, envenom'd thought can draw ? 
What healing hand can pour the balm of peace, 
And turn my sight undaunted on the tomb ? 165 



THE REDEEMER ON THE CROSS. 

With joy, — with grief, that heahng hand I see : 
Ah ! too conspicuous ! it is fix'd on high. 
On high ? — what means my phrensy ? I blaspheme ; 
Alas ! how low ! how far beneath the skies 
The skies it form'd, and now it bleeds for me — 170 

But bleeds the balm I want — yet still it bleeds ! 
Draw the dire steel — ah no ! the dreadful blessing 
What heart or can sustain, or dares forego ? 
There hangs all human hope ; that nail supports 
The falling universe : that gone, we drop ; 175 

Horror receives us, and the dismal wish 

154. From death for got : Forgetfulness of death is assigned as the prolific 
cause of that ungodliness and vice which give to death's dart its point — its 
power to distress the soul. 

169. Beneath the skies: On the cross. 

175. The falling universe : The expression refers to mankind falling into 
endless ruin. 

176. The dismal wish that Creation had been smothered in her birth : — This 
dash seems to denote that the sense is left incomplete, that the idea is not 



1*74 THE COMPLAINT. 

Creation had been smother'd in her bii'th — 

Dai'kness his curtain, and his bed the dust ; 

When stai*s and sun are dust beneath his throne ! 

In heav'n itself can such indulgence dwell ? 180 

O what a groan was there ! a groan not his : 

He seized our dreadful right, the load sustain'd, 

And heaved the mountain from a guilty world. 

A thousand worlds so bought, were bought too dear ; 

Sensations new in angels' bosoms rise, 185 

Suspend their song, and make a pause in bhss. 

for their song to reach my lofty theme ! 
Inspire me, Night ! with all thy tuneful spheres, 
Much rather Thou who dost these spheres inspire ! 
Whilst I vnth seraphs share seraphic themes, 190 

And show to men the dignity of man. 
Lest I blaspheme my subject with my song. 
Shall Pagan pages glow celestial flame, 
And Christian languish ? On om* hearts, not heads, 
Falls the foul infamy. My heart, awake : 195 

What can awake thee, unawaked by this, 
' Expended Deity on human weal V 
Feel the great truths which bm-st the tenfold night 

fully expressed. Leaving it in this state, the author proceeds with his gra- 
phic picture of the Redeemer's humiliation and sufferings in behalf of " the 
falling universe." Darkness his curtain^ and his bed the dust: not only did 
he bleed on the cross : he was enveloped in the darkness of the grave : ho 
made it his bed : when stars and suns are dust beneath his throne, that is 
although stars and suns are dust, are no more valuable, compared with his 
divine majesty, supremacy, and glory. In one edition the (178) line reads 

thus : — 

" Darkness is his curtain, and his bed the dust." 

181. j1 groan not his : Not proceeding from sufferings on his own account, 

or due to him from any fault or crime of his own. 

189. Inspire : Cause to move, as if they were possessed of animation, 

192. Blaspheme: Degrade. 

193. Glow : Glow vi^ith. 

196. JBy this : By this declaration or sentiment. 

197. Deity having expended its vast resources of benevolence and power 
in promoting the welfare of man. 



NIGHT IV. 176 

Of heathen error, with a golden flood 

Of endless day. To feel is to be fired ; 200 

And to beheve, Lorenzo, is to feel. 

THE JUSTICE AXD THE LOVE OF GOD. 

Thou most indulgent, most tremendous Pow'r ! 
Still more tremendous for thy wondrous love ; 
That arms with awe more awful thy commands, 
And foal transgi*ession dips in sevenfold gmlt ; 205 

How our hearts tremble at thy love immense ! 
In love immense, in^dolably just ! 
Thou, rather than thy justice should be stain' d, 
Didst stain the cross ; and, work of wondei-s far 
The greatest, that thy dearest far might bleed. 210 

Bold thought ! shall I dare speak it or repress ? 
Should man more execrate or boast the guilt 
Which roused such vengeance ? which such love inflamed ? 
O'er guilt (how mountainous) with outstretch'd arms 
Stem Justice, and soft-smiling Love, embrace, 215 

Supporting, in fall majesty, thy throne. 
When seem'd its majesty to need support, 
Or that, or man, inevitably lost : 
What but the fathomless of thought divine 
Could labom* such expedient from despau*, 220 

And rescue both ? Both rescue ! both exalt ! 
O how are both exalted by the deed ! 
The wondi'ous deed ! or shall I call it more ? 
A wonder in Omnipotence itself! 
A mystery, no less to gods than men ! 225 

200-1. The sentiment is: We cannot feel, without feeling intensely; and 
we cannot believe the great truths relating to the incarnation and atonement 
of the Divine Redeemer, and not feel thus. 

218. Or that : Either that, &c. 

220. Labour : Elaborate, bring forth as the result of effort. 

221. Rescue both : Rescue from ruia both the divine throne, and man. 
225. To f;ods : To the angels, in Scripture often called "the sons of God." 



176 THE COMPLAINT. 



A GOD ALL MERCY IS A GOD UNJUST. 

'Not thus GUI' infidels th' Eternal draw, 
A God all o'er consummate, absolute. 
Full orb'd, in his whole round of rays complete : 
They set at odds Heav'n's jarring attributes, 
And with one excellence another wound ; 230 

Maim heav'n's perfection, break its equal beams, 
Bid mercy triumph over — God himself, 
Undeified by their opprobrious praise : 
A God all mercy is a God unjust. 

Ye brainless wits ! ye baptized infidels ! 235 

Ye worse for mending* ! wash'd to fouler stains ! 
The ransom was paid down ; the fund of heav'n, 
Heaven's inexhaustible, exhausted fund. 
Amazing and amazed, pour'd forth the price, 
All price beyond : though curious to compute, 240 

Ai'changels fail'd to cast the mighty sum : 
Its value vast ungrasp'd by minds create, 
For ever hides and glov/s in the Supreme. 
And was the ransom j)aid ? It was ; and paid 
(What can exalt the bounty more ?) for you. 245 

The sun beheld it — No, the shocking scene 
Drove back his chariot : Midnight veil'd his face, 
Not such as this, not such as Nature makes : 
A midnight Nature shudder'd to behold ; 

235. Ye brainless wits, &c. : The celebrated and once abandoned Earl of 
Rochester, after his reformation, and just before his death, is reported to have 
expressed a desire for his surviving son in the following language : — " that 
he noight never be a wit, that is, one of those wretched creatures who pride 
themselves in abusing God and religion, denying his being or his providence, 
but rather that he might become an honest and religious man, which alone 
could render him the support and blessing of his family." 

240. Curious : Desirous. 

242. Create: Created. 

247. Drove back his chariot : An allusion to the Sun as a Pagan divinity, 
who was represented as riding in a chariot drawn by four horses. 



NIGHT IV. 



Ill 



A midnight new ! a dread eclipse (without 250 

Opposing spheres) from her Creator's frown ! 

Sun ! didst thou fly thy Maker's pain ? or start 

At that enormous load of human guilt 

Which bow'd his blessed head, o'erwhelm'd his cross, 

Made groan the centre, burst earth's marble womb 255 

With pangs, strange pangs ! deliver'd of her dead ? 

Hell howl'd ; and heav'n that hour let fall a tear : 

Heav'n wept, that man might smile ! Heav'n bled, that man 

Might never die ! 

THE TRIUMPHANT RESURRECTION AND ASCENSION. 

And is devotion virtue ? 'Tis compell'd. 260 

What heart of stone but glows at thoughts hke these ? 
Such contemplations mount us, and should mount 
The mind still higher, nor e'er glance on man 
Unraptured, uninflamed. Where roll my thoughts 
To rest from wonders ! other wonders rise, 265 

And strike where'er they roll : my soul is caught : 
Heav'n's sov'reign blessings clust'ring from the cross, 
Eush on her in a throng, and close her round 
The pris'ner of amaze ! In his blest life 
I see the path, and in his death the price, 2*70 

And in his great ascent the proof supreme 

250. J. midnight new : A new sort of midnight, occurring in the day time. 
Without opposing spheres : without the interposition of the moon between us 
and the sun, causing an eclipse of the ordinary kind. It was a preternatural 
darkness, as it occurred, not at new moon, but at full morn ; which, on natu- 
ral principles, can by no possibility be accounted for 

252. Sun, &c : A most affecting apostrophe to the sun, followed by a gra- 
phic delineation of the marvellous events connected with the crucifixion. 
None can fail to admire the fine antitheses in lines 258-59. 

260. ^ Tis compelV d : The author had asked — And is devotion virtue? is it 
worthy of praise or reward ? He answers ; His compelled; it is unavoidable ; 
it cannot fail to arise upon contemplations like these. 

262, MouMt us : Raise us. By a poetic license the verb neuter is changed 
to a verb transitive. 
8* 



1^8 THE COMPLAINT. 

Of immortality. — And did he rise ? 

Hear, O ye nations ! hear it, O ye dead ! 

He rose, he rose ! he bui-st the bars of death. 

Lift up your heads, ye everlasting gates, 275 

And give the King of Glory to come in. 

Who is the King of Glory ? He who left 

His thi'one of glory for the pangs of death. 

Lift up your heads, ye everlasting gates. 

And give the King of Glory to come in. 280 

Who is the King of Glory ? He who slew 

The rav'nous foe that gorged all human race ! 

The King of Glory he, whose glory fill'd 

Heav'n with amazement at his love to man *, 

And with divine complacency beheld 285 

Pow'rs most illumined wilder'd in the theme. 

HUMAN NATURE, THROUGH CHRIST, TRIUMPHANT. 

The theme, the joy, how then shall man sustain ? 
O the burst gates ! crush'd sting ! demolish'd throne ? 
Last gasp ! of vanquished death. Shout, earth and heav'n. 
This sum of good to man ! whose nature then 290 

Took wing, and mounted with him from the tomb. 
Then, then, I rose ; then first humanity 
Triumphant past the crystal ports of light, 
(Stupendous guest !) and seized eternal youth. 
Seized in our name. E'er since 'tis blasphemous 295 

To call man mortal. Man's mortahty 
Was then transferr'd to death ; and heav'n's duration 

275. Lift up., &c. : Much of the phraseology of this beautiful passage is 
drawn from the 24th Psalm, but applied to a very different event from that 
which it there sets forth by a very strong apostrophe to the gates of the 
holy city. Our author transfers the apostrophe to the gates of heaven, on 
the grander occasion of the triumphant ascension and entrance there of the 
lately crucified Son of God. 

292. T/tm, &c- : A most magnificent climax of thought is here presented. 
Then^ 1 rose ; when Christ rose, then virtually I rose ; my own resurrection 
was thus eflfectually provided for and guaranteed. 



NIGHT IV. 



1*79 



TJnalienably seal'd to this frail frame, 

This child of dust — Man, all-immortal, hail ! 

Hail, Heav'n, all lavish of strange gifts to man I 300 

Thine all the gloiy, man's the boundless bhss. 

Where am I rapt by this triumphant theme, 
On Christian joy's exulting wing, above 
Th' Aonian mount ! — Alas ! small cause of joy ! 
What if to pain immortal ? if extent 305 

Of being, to preclude a close of wo ! 
Where, then, my boast of immortahty ? ^ 
I boast it still, though cover'd o'er with guilt ; 
For guilt, not innocence, his life he pour'd ; 
'Tis guilt alone can justify his death ; 310 

Not that, unless his death can justify 
Eelenting guilt in heav'n's indulgent sight. 
If, sick of foUy, I relent, he wiites 

301. Thine, &c. : Thy property is all the glory : man's property or privi- 
lege is the boundless bliss of heaven. To Thee belongs the glory — all of it ; 
to man belongs the bliss. 

304. Above the Aonian Mount: A mountain m Bceotia, more anciently 
called Aonia, It was distinguished in classical mythology as the resi- 
dence of the Muses. Our author represents himself as a bird carried up on 
Christian joy's exulting wing above this mount. He only means, in plain 
language, to intimate that his theme has borne his contemplation to a higher 
eminence, and to more commanding prospects, than heathen poets had at- 
tained under the patronage of the Muses. He borrowed the idea, and the 
language, from Milton in the introduction of the " Paradise Lost" — 

" I thence 
Invoke thy aid to my adventurous song, 
That with no middle flight intends to soar 
Above tlie Aonian movmiP — ^Book 1. 13-15. 

310. Can justify his death, &c. : The word justify must be taken in quite 
different, though well-established, senses in this and the following line. The 
passage may be thus rendered : — Nothing but the guilt of man can vindicate 
the death of the innocent Son of God ; can furnish an adequate reason, or 
pretext, or occasion for it ; can make it appear a fit sacrifice on his part, or 
fully explain its occurrence. Nor can guilt accomplish this {not that) unless 
his death can Justify relenting guilt, Sj-c. : unless by means of his death the 
relenting or penitent child of guilt may be pardoned, and treated as a just 
person. 



180 THE COMPLAINT. 

My name in heav'n with that inverted spear 

(A spear deep dipt in blood !) which pierced his side, 315 

And open'd there a font for all mankind, 

Who strive, who combat crimes, to drink and hve : 

This, only this, subdues the fear of death. 

THE WONDERS OF PARDONING MERCY. 

And what is this ? — survey the wondrous cure, 
And at each step let higher wonder rise ! 320 

' Pardon for infinite ofience ! and pardon 
Thi'ough means that speak its value infinite ! 
A pardon bought with blood ! with blood divine ! 
"With blood divine of him I made my foe ! 
Persisted to provoke I though wooed and awed, 325 

Blest and chastised, a flagrant rebel still : 
A rebel 'midst the thimders of his throne ! 
Nor I alone ! a rebel univei'se ! 
My species up in arms ! not one exempt ! 
Yet for the foulest of the foul he dies ! 330 

Most joy'd for the redeem'd from deepest guilt ! 
As if om- race were held of highest rank. 
And Godhead dearer as more kind to man !' 

Bound ev'ry heart ; and ev'ry bosom biu-n ! 
what a scale of miracles is here ! 335 

Its lowest round high planted on the skies : 
Its tow'ring smnmit lost beyond the thought 
Of man or angel ! that I could climb 
The wonderful ascent with equal praise ! 
Praise ! flow for ever (if astonishment 340 

Will give thee leave) my pi-aise ; for ever flow ; 
Praise ardent, cordial, constant, to high heav'n 

320. Let higher wonder^ &c. : Some striking examples of the climax are 
here presented in the following lines, each successive thought rising in 
importance above the preceding, with a very happy effect. 

339. With eqital praise : With praise corresponding to the elevation of the 
ascent. 



NIGHT IV. 181 

More fragrant than Arabia sacrificed, 
And all her spicy mountains in a flame. 

APOSTATE PRAISE CALLED BACK TO GOD. 

So dear, so due to heav'n, shall praise descend 345 

With her soft plume (fi*om plausive angels' wing 
First pluck'd by man) to tickle mortal ears, 
Thus diving in the pockets of the great ? 
Is praise the perquisite of ev'ry paw, 

Though black as hell, that grapples well for gold ? 350 

O love of gold, thou meanest of amours ! 
Shall praise her odours waste on virtues dead ; 
Enbalm the base, perfume the stench of guilt, 
Earn dirty bread by washing Ethiops fair ; 
Removing filth, or sinking it from sight, 355 

A scavenger in scenes, where vacant posts. 
Like gibbets yet untenanted, expect 
Their future ornaments ? From courts and thrones 
Return, apostate Praise ! thou vagabond ! 
Thou prostitute ! to thy first love return ; 360 

Thy first, thy greatest, once unrivall'd theme. 

There flow redundant, like Meander flow. 
Back to thy fountain, to that parent pow'r 

343. Sacrificed : A participle and not a verb. The idea is, more fragrant 
than Arabia would be, if offered in sacrifice. 

345. Praise is here personified, and represented as descending from her 
proper abode, heaven, and from offering her appropriate homage to the God 
of heaven ; and with her soft plume, stolen from plausive (applauding) angels^ 
wing, proceeding to tickle mortal ears, the mortal ears of the great, thus diving 
into their pockets. The language in this connexion makes up in graphic 
faithfulness and power, as a delineation of human manners, what it lacks of 
poetic dignity and beauty. 

349. The perquisite : The lawful due. 

351. Of amours : Of loves, or objects of love. 

354. Ethiops: Ethiopians. 

362. Like Meander, &c. : This was a v^rinding river in Phrygia, Asia Mi- 
nor. The word meander, to wind about, was thence borrowed. 



182 THE COMPLAINT. 

Who gives the tongue to sound, the thought to soar, 

The soul to be. Men homage pay to men : 865 

Thoughtless beneath whose dreadful eye they bow, 

In mutual awe profound, of clay to clay. 

Of guilt to guilt, and tui-n their backs on thee, 

Great Sire ! whom thrones celestial ceaseless sing ; 

To prostrate angels an amazing scene ! 3*70 

the presumption of man's awe for man! — 

Man's Author, End, Restorer, Law, and Judge ! 

Thine all ; day thine, and thine this gloom of night, 

With aU her wealth, with all her radiant worlds. 

What night eternal but a frown from thee ? 375 

What heav'n's meridian glory but thy smile ? 

And shall not praise be thine, not human praise. 

While heav'n's high host on hallelujahs live ? 

ADORATION AND PRAISE TO THE CREATOR. 

O may I breathe no longer than I breathe 
My soul in praise to HIM who gave my soul, 380 

And all her infinite of prospect fail* 
Cut through the shades of hell, great Love ! by thee, 
O most adorable ! most unadored ! 
Where shall that praise begin which ne'er shall end ? 

369. Thrones celestial: The angelic orders, represented here as singing 
ceaselessly to the praise of their Creator. The term is a Scriptural one, and 
is applied to angels on account of the elevated rank and power which they 
possess, compared with other created beings. See Coloss. 1 : 16 — " whether 
thrones^ or dominions, or principalities, or powers . all things were created by 
him and for him" (Christ) . 

This term is very often applied to angels by the great Epic poets. Thus 
Par. Lost, Bk. V. 600. 

" Hear all ye any els, progeny of light, 
TJirones, Dominations, Princedoms, Virtues. Powers." 

370. An amazing scene: Namely, the homage which men pay to men, 
turning their backs on Him whom angels perpetually praise. 

382. Cut through^ &c. : An original and impressive thought is here beau- 
tifully expressed. In the next line how striking the contrast, most adorable^ 
most unadored ! 



NIGHT IV. 183 

Wliere'er I tui'n, -what claim on all applause ! 385 

How is ISTight's sable mantle labom-'d o'er, 

How richly wi'ought with attributes divine ! 

What wisdom shines ! what love ! This midnight pomp, 

This gorgeous arch, with golden worlds inlaid ! 

Built with divine ambition ! nought to thee ; 390 

For others this profusion. Thou, apart. 

Above, beyond, tell me, mighty Mind ! 

Where art thou ? shall I dive into the deep ? 

CaU to the sun ? or ask the roaring winds 

For their Creator ? Shall I question loud 395 

The thunder, if in that th' Almighty dwells ? 

Or holds BGE furious storms in straiten'd reins, 

And bids fierce whirlwinds wheel his rapid car ? 

What mean these questions ? — Trembling I retract ; 
My prostrate soul adores the present God : 400 

Praise I a distant Deity ! He tunes 
My voice (if tuned :) the nerve that wi-ites sustains : 
Wrapp'd in his being I resound his praise : 
But though past all difilised, without a shore 
His essence, local is His throne (as meet) 405 

To gather the dispers'd (as standards caU 
The listed from afar ;) to fix a point, 
A central point, collective of his sons, 
Since finite ev'ry nature but his own. 

The nameless HE, whose nod is Nature's birth : 410 

And Nature's shield the shadow of his hand ; 
Her dissolution, his suspended smile ! 
The oTcat First-Last ! pa^'ilion'd high he sits 
In darkness from excessive splendour, borne, 
By gods unseen, unless through lustre lost. 415 

His glory, to created glory bright 
As that to central horrors : he looks down 

404. Past all diffused : Diffused beyond all objects in creation. 
410. Is (the origin of) Natureh birth. 414-16. In darkness borne (born, 
originated) from excessive splendour ; unseen by gods (angels), imless through 



184 THE COMPLAINT. 

On all that soars, and spans immensity. 

Though night unnumber'd worlds unfolds to view, 
Boundless Creation ! what art thou? A beam, 420 

A mere effluvium of his majesty. 
And shall an atom of this atom-world 
Mutter, in dust and sin, the theme of heav'n ? 
Down to the centre should I send my thought, 
Through beds of ghtt'ring ore and glowing gems, 425 

Their beggar'd blaze wants lustre for my lay ; 
Goes out in darkness : if, on tow'ring wing, 
I send it through the boundless vault of stars, 
(The stars, tho' rich, what di-oss their gold to Thee, 
Great, good, wise, wonderful, eternal King !) 430 

If to those conscious stai*s thy throne around, 
Praise ever-pouring, and imbibing bliss. 
And ask then* strain ; they want it, more they want. 
Poor their abundance, humble their subhme, 
Languid their energy, theii* ardour cold : 435 

Indebted stUl, their highest raptm-e burns 
Short of its mai-k, defective, though divine. 

THE PRAISE OF REDEMPTION MORE APPROPRIATE TO MAN THAN 
TO ANGELS. 

Still more — this theme is man's, and man's alone ; 
Their vast appointments reach it not ; they see 
On earth a bounty not indulg'd on high, 440 

And downward look for heav'n's superior praise ! 
Fii-st-bom of Ether ! high in fields of hght ! 

(in consequence of) lustre lost (obscured) as by the incarnation: — '"God 
manifest in the flesh— seen of angels." 1 Tim. iii. 15. His glory^ compared 
to created glory is bright^ as that is bright, compared to the gloomy darkness 
of the interior of the earth. 431. Conscious stars : Angelic intelligences. 
438. Is man's : Is appropriate to man. 

441. For Heaven's superior pj-aise : For the highest grounds of the praise 
which they pay to God in heaven. 

442. Ether : Heaven. It literally denotes a form of matter more subtile, 
or thin, than the atmosphere. 



NIGHT IV. 185 

View man to see the glory of your God ! 

Could angels envy, they had envied here : 

And some did envy ; and the rest, though gods, 445 

Yet still gods unredeem'd (there triumphs man, 

Tempted to weigh the dust against the skies,) 

They less would feel, though more adorn my theme. 

They sung creation (for in that they shared ;) 

How rose in melody that child of Love ! 450 

Creation's great superior, man ! is thine ; 

Thine is Redemption ; they just gave the key, 

'Tis thine to raise and eternize the song. 

Though human, yet divine ; for should not this 

Eaise man o'er man, and kindle seraphs here ? 455 

Redemption ! 'twas creation more sublime ; 

Redemption ! 'twas the labour of the skies : 

Far more than labour — it was death in heav'n, 

A truth so strange, 'twere bold to think it true, 

If not far bolder still, to disbeheve. 460 

Here pause and ponder. Was there death in heav'n ? 
"What then on earth ? on earth, which struck the blow ? 
Who struck it ? Who ? — how is man enlarged, 

445. Though gods : This is an obvious instance in which our author uses 
the terms gods and angels as synonymous. 

449. They sung creation : They celebrated the praise of God for his crea- 
tive acts. They shared in creation only as spectators and admirers. Milton, 
in his Hymn to the Nativity, compares the music of the angels at that event 
with the music of the same beings when the work of creation, that child of 
love, was finished. 

" Such music (as 'tis said) 
Before was never made, 

But when of old the sons of morning sung, 
While the Creator great 
His constellations set 
And the well-balanced world on hinges hung." 

451. Creation's great superior : That is, redemption. 

455. Kindle seraphs : Cause men to become ardent as seraphs. This word 
comes from one in the Hebrew which signifies " to burn." 

" As the rapt seraph that adores and I^u^ns."' — Pope. 



186 THE COMPLAINT. 

Seen through this medium : How the pigmy towVs ! 

How counterpoised his origin from dust ! 465 

How counterpoised to dust his sad return ! 

How voided his vast distance from the skies ! 

How near he presses on the seraph's wing ! 

Which is the seraph ? Which the born of clay ? 

How this demonstrates, through the thickest cloud. 470 

Of guilt and clay condensed, the Son of Heav'n ; 

The double Son ; the made, and the re-made ! 

And shall heav'n's double property be lost ? 

Man's double madness only can destroy. 

To man the bleeding Cross has promised all ; 475 

The bleeding Cross has sworn eternal grace. 

Who gave his life, what grace shall he deny ? 

O ye, who from this rock of ages leap, 

Apostates, plunging headlong in the deep ! 

What cordial joy, what consolation strong, 480 

Whatever winds arise, or billows roll, 

Our int'rest in the Master of the storm ! 

Chng there, and in wreck'd ISTatm'e's ruin smile, 

While vile apostates tremble in a calm. 

THE GRANDEUR OF HUMAN NATURE. 

Man, know thyself: all wisdom centres there. 485 

To none man seems ignoble but to man. 
Angels that grandeur, men o'erlook, admire : 
How long shall human nature be their book, 
Degen'rate mortal ! and unread by thee ? 

465. Counterpoised: Balanced by an opposing weight — redemption. This 
event is an offset to his humble origin from dust, and his sad return to dust. 

It also voids (465) , or reduces to nothing, his vast distance from the skies. 

473. Double property : Redeemed man is doubly the property of God, by 
creation at first, and again by regeneration. 

482. Master of the storm : An allusion to the beautiful incident which oc- 
curred on the sea of Galilee. 

487. Men o'erlook: Which men o'erlook. 



NIGHT rv. 



187 



The beam dim reason sheds shows wondere there : 490 

What high contents ! illustrious faculties 1 
But the grand comment, which displays at full 
Our human height, scarce sever'd from divine. 
By Heav'n compos'd, was publish'd on the Cross. 

Who looks on that, and sees not in himself 495 

An awful stranger, a terrestrial God ? 
A glorious partner with the Deity 
In that high attribute, immortal life ? 
If a god bleeds, he bleeds not for a worm. 
I gaze, and as I gaze my mounting soul 600 

Catches strange fire, Eternity ! at thee, 
And drops the world — or, rather, more enjoys. 
How changed the face of Nature ! how improved ! 
What seem'd a chaos, shines a glorious world, 
Or, what a world, an Eden ; heighten'd all ! 605 

It is another scene, another self ! 
And still another, as time rolls along, 
And that a self far more illustrious stiU. 
Beyond long ages, yet roll'd up in shades 
Unpierced by bold conjecture's keenest ray, 510 

What evolutions of surprising fate ! 
How Nature opens, and receives my soul 
In boundless walks of raptured thought ! where gods 
Encounter and embrace me ! What new bhths 
Of strange adventure, foreign to the sun ; 515 

Where what now charms, perhaps whate'er exists, 
Old Time, and fair Creation, are forgot ? 

Is this extravagant ? of man we form 
Extravagant conceptions to be just : 

Conception unconfined wants wings to reach him ; 520 

Beyond its reach the Godhead only more. 

494. On the Cross : The cross, or sufferings, of Christ, publish to the uni- 
verse the grandeur of human nature, as nothing else does. 

521. Godhead only more: The Godhead only is more beyond the reach 
even of our unconfined and widest conception than man is, in his future 
beine:. 



188 THE COMPLAINT. 

He, the great Father ! kindled at one flaroe 

The world of rationals : one spirit pour'd 

From spirit's awful fountain ; poiu-'d himself 

Through all their souls, but not an equal stream ; 525 

523-531. One spirit pour^d^ &c. . Our author is here rather obscure, or 
indulges in unv/'arrantably bold figures of speech. He means nothing more 
perhaps than that God diffused his own rationality, or imparted a rational 
nature like his own, to the world of rationals, to all rational beings ; but what 
he means (527-30) when, after a season of trial, should they continue as they 
were made, they shall be resorbed into himself again, is not so plain, or so 
easily assented to. It seems too much like confounding the god-head and 
}. is rational offspring. There is another objection to this passage. If the 
rationals are re-absorbed into, or swallowed up again by, Deity, how can his 
throne be their centre, and his smile their crown (531) ? 

There is too much similarity in the language of our author in this entire 
passage to the Pagan doctrine of the animus mundi — the doctrine that God 
is the soul of the world — that God is all things, and all things God — that he 
animates the universe as the human soul the human body ; and hence he 
ought to be worshipped in all the parts and objects of nature. This doc- 
trine is beautifully expressed in the lines of Pope : although they are sus- 
ceptible of an interpretation consistent with just views of the divine omni- 
potence and universal agency, a subject upon which it is difficult to write 
impressively or even intelligibly without the use of highly figurative lan- 
guage. The sacred writers themselves employ it. 

" All are but parts of one stupendous whole 
Whose "body Nature is, and God the soul ; 
That changed through all, and yet in all the same, 
Great in the earth as in the ethereal flame ; 
Warms in the sun, refreshes in the hreeze, 
Glows in the stars, and blossoms in the trees ; 
Lives through all life, extends through all extent, 
Spreads undivided, operates imspent." 

" With the doctrine of the animus mundi (says Dugald Stewart) some phi- 
losophers, both ancient and modern, have connected another theory, accord 
ing to which the souls of men are portions of the Supreme Being, with whom 
they are re-united at death, and in whom they are finally absorbed and lost. 
To assist the imagination in conceiving this theory, death has been com- 
pared to the breaking of a vial of water, immersed in the ocean. It is 
needless to say that this incomprehensible jargon has no necessary connexion 
with the doctrine which represents God as the soul of the world, and that it 
would have been loudly disclaimed, not only by Pope and Thomson, but by 
Epictelus, Antoninus, and all the wisest and soberest of the Stoical school." 

Sir William Jones (says the same author) mentions a very curious modi- 



NIGHT IV. 189 

Profuse, or frugal, of th' inspiring God, 

As Ms wise plan demanded ; and when past 

Their various trials, in their various spheres, 

If they continue rational, as made, 

Resorbs them all into himself again, 530 

His throne their centre, and his smile theu* crown. 

ANGELS AND MEN COMPARED. 

Why doubt we, then, the glorious truth to sing, 
Though yet unsung, as deem'd, perhaps, too bold ? 
Angels are men of a superior kind ; 

Angels are men in lighter habit clad, 536 

High o'er celestial mountains wing'd in flight ; 
And men are angels, loaded for an hour. 
Who wade this miry vale, and chmb with pain, 
And slipp'ry step, the bottom of the steep. 
Angels their failings, mortals have their praise ; 540 

fication of this theory of absorption^ as one of the doctrines of the Vedanta 
school. " The Vedanta school represents Elysian happiness as a total ab- 
sorption, though not such as to destroy consciousness^ in the divine essence." — 
Stewarth Works, vol. vi. 280. 

In further elucidation of this subject, we may add that Seneca, an eminent 
philosopher of the Stoical school, regarded human beings as parts of the Di- 
vinity — " Quid est autem, cur non existimes in eo divini aliquid existere, qui 
Dei pars est ? Totum hoc quo continemur, et unum est et Deus ; et socii 
ejus sumus et membra." Epictetus taught that "• man is a distinct portion 
of the Divine essence, and contains a part of God in himself." — (Miss Car- 
ter's translation, Bk. II. ch. 8, sec. 2) . Antoninus represents the soul as an 
efliux or emanation from the governor of the world. — Lib. II. sec. 4. And 
on the principle that the Deity is the soul of the world he addresses his 
prayer to the world. — Lib. IV. sec, 23. — JDewarh Mor. Philos. vol. 71. 507. 

Dr. Leland in his work on the Christian Revelation quotes Cicero, in his 
Academics, as giving this representation of the sentiments of the Stoics ; 
that they held that " this world is wise, and hath a mind or soul, whereby 
it formed or fabricated both it and itself, and ordereth, moveth, and govern- 
eth all things : and that the sun, moon, and stars are gods, because a certain 
animal intelligence pervadeth and passeth through all things." — Cic. Acad. 
Lib. II. cap. 37. 

540. Angels their failings : As Eliphaz, the friend of Job, had affirmed : — 
" Shall mortal man be more just than God ; shall a man be more pure than 



190 THE COMPLAINT. 

While here, of corps ethereal, such enroll'd, 

And summon'd to the glorious standard soon, 

Which flames eternal crimson through the skies : 

Nor are om- brothei-s thoughtless of theii- kin, 

Yet absent ; but not absent from theii- love. 545 

Michael has fought om* battles ; Raphael sung 

Our triumphs ; Gabriel on om- errands flown. 

Sent by the Sov'reign : and are these, man, 

Thy friends, ihj warm aUies ? and thou (shame burn 

Thy cheek to cinder !) rival to the brute ? 550 

religion's all. 
Religion's all. Descending from the skies 

his Maker ? Behold he put no trust in his servants ; and his angels he 
charged with folly," or frailty. The meaning is, that even the angels are, in 
their moral perfection, altogether inferior to God their jMaker. 

Mortals have their praise : Have qualities worthy of praise. In the last of 
our author's published poems, "Resignation," he has a stanza which may 
be adduced to qualify what he may elsewhere have expressed in regard to 
human merit. 

" Of huinan nature ne'er too high 
Are our ideas -wrougbt ; 
Of human merit ne'er too low 
Depressed the dai-ing thought." 

541. Of corps ethereal, such enrolPd: A military allusion. Mortals while 
on earth have their names registered upon the roll of ethereal or heavenly 
soldiery. 

545. Yet absent from them (the angels) . 

546- Michael has fought, &c. : See Rev. 12 : 7. "Michael and his angels 
fought agamst the dragon." 

Raphael swig, &c. : This angel is not mentioned in the canonical Scrip- 
tures, but we find him in the apocryphal book of Tobit, and, together with 
Michael and Gabriel, he figures most largely in '' Paradise Lost." 

547. Gabriel on our errands, &c. : Daniel the prophet says : " while I was 
speaking in prayer, even the man Gabriel, whom I had seen in the vision 
at the beginning, being caused to fly swiftly, touched me, &c. : See Dan. 
ix. 21-2. See the Gospel of Luke i. 19, 26. " The angel said, I am Gabriel 
that stand in the presence of God 5 and am sent to speak unto thee and to 
show thee, &c." 



NIGHT IV. 191 

To wi-etched man, the goddess in her left 

Holds out this world, and in her right the next. 

Religion ! the sole voucher man is man ; 

Supporter sole of man above himself; 555 

E'en in this night of frailty, change, and death, 

She gives the soul a soul that acts a god. 

Religion ! Providence ! an after-state ! 

Here is firm footing ; here is solid rock ; 

This can support us ; all is sea besides : 560 

Sinks under us ; bestorms, and then devoui-s. 

His hand the good man fastens on the skies, 

And bids earth roll, nor feels her idle whirl. 

As when a wretch, from thick polluted air, 
Darkness, and stench, and suffocating damps, 565 

And dungeon-hori-oi-s, by kind fate discharged, 
Climbs some fair eminence, where ether pure 
Surrounds him, and Elysian prospects rise, 
His heart exults, his spirits cast their load, 
As if new born he triumphs in the change ! 570 

So joys the soul, when from inglorious aims 
And sordid sweets, from feculence and froth 
Of ties terrestrial, set at large, she mounts 
To Reason's region, her own element. 
Breathes hopes immortal, and affects the skies. 275 

DEVOUT ADDRESS TO THE REDEEMER. 

Religion ! thou the soul of happiness, 

554. The sole voucher, &c. : The sole voucher, or evidence, that man is 
man ; that he is a being of immortal dignity. Religion is also the sole sup- 
porter of man above himself: she lifts him higher than he would otherwise 
attain ; she raises him to the condition of angelic dignity and bliss. Com- 
pare (557) . 

561. Bestorms : Involves us in its storms. The sentiment in the next two 
lines awakens the feelings of sublimity 

575. Effects the skies : Aspires to the enjoyments of heaven. 

576. The soul of happiness : Religion is the vital principle of happiness, 
that without which it cannot exist. 



192 THE COMPLAINT. 

And, groaning Calvary, of thee, there shine 

The noblest truths ; there strongest motives sting ; 

There sacred violence assaults the soul ; 

There nothing but compulsion is forborne. 680 

-Can love allure us ? or can terror awe ? 

He weeps ! — the falhng drop puts out the sun. 

He sighs ! — the sigh earth's deep foundation shakes. 

If in his love so terrible, what then 

His wrath inflamed ? His tenderness on fire ? 585 

Like soft smooth oil, outblazing other fii-es ? 

Can pray'r, can praise, avert it ? — Thon, my all ! 

My theme ! my inspiration ! and my crovra ! 

My strength in age ! my rise in low estate ! 

My soul's ambition, pleasm-e, wealth ! my world ? 590 

My light in darkness ! and my hfe in death ! 

My boast through time ! bliss through eternity ! 

Eternity, too short to speak thy praise. 

Or fathom thy profound of love to man ! 

To man of men the meanest, Bv'n to me ; 595 

My sacrifice ! my God ! — what things are these ! 

What then art Thou ? By what name shall I call Thee ? 
Knew I the name devout archangels use, 
Devout archangels should the name enjoy, 
By me unrivall'd ; thousands more sublime, 600 

None half so dear as that which though unspoke, 
Still glows at heart. how Omnipotence 
Is lost in love ! thou great Philanthropist ! 
Father of angels ! but the friend of man ! 
Like Jacob, fondest of the younger born ! 605 

577. Of thee: The soul of thee, groaning Calvary! It is the religious 
aspect of the Cross that constitutes its principal attraction and power. This 
is shown in the lines that follow. 

582. He weeps : The reference, most obviously, is to Christ. 

587, Thou, myall! How exquisitely beautiful and affectionate is the ex- 
pansion or illustration of this sentiment in the following lines (588-595). 

594. Profound of love : Great depth of love. 

595. To man of men the meanest : To the meanest man of men. 



NIGHT IV. 193 

Thou who didst save him, snatch the smoking brand 

From out the flames, and quench it in thy blood ! 

How art thou pleased by bounty to distress ! 

To make us groan beneath our gratitude, 

Too big for birth! to favour and confound ! 610 

To challenge, and to distance all return ! 

Of lavish love stupendous heights to soar. 

And leave praise panting in the distant vale ! 

Thy right, too great, defrauds thee of thy due ; 

And sacrilegious our subhmest song ! 615 

But since the naked will obtains thy smile, 

Beneath this monument of praise unpaid. 

And future life symphonious to my strain, 

(That noblest hymn to heav'n !) for ever lie 

Entomb'd my fear of death I and ev'ry fear, 620 

The dread of ev'ry evil but Thy frown. 

LUKEWARM DEVOTION, UNDEVOUT. 

Whom see I yonder so demurely smile ? 
Laughter a labour, and might break their rest. 
Ye Quietists, in homage to the skies ! 

606. Him : The younger-born (605) , man ; the angels being the elder, of 
whom those " who kept not their first estate" were suffered to perish in the 
flames of perdition. 

610. To favour, &c. : How art thou pleased (608) to favour and confound ; 
so to favour, as to confound by the greatness and number of the gifts be^ 
stowed. 

611. His favours challenge^ but are so great as to distance, all return; that 
is to preclude a full and sufficient return on the part of man. 

614. Thy right, too great, &c. : Thy right being too great to be suitably 
praised by men, &c. 

617-18. Beneath this monument, &c, : Beneath this monument, bearing 
the confession of praise unpaid, and beneath a life in future symphonious (cor- 
responding) to my strain, that is, devoted to the Redeemer. 

623. ^nd might break, &c. : Laughter being a labour, and, that which might 
break their rest. 

624. Ye Quietists : Reference is here made to those cold-hearted frozen for- 

9 



194 THE COMPLAINT. 

Serene ! of soft addi-ess ! who mildly make 625 

Au unobtrusive tender of your hearts, 
Abhorring ^'iolence ! who halt indeed, 
But, for the blessing, wrestle not with Heav'n ! 
Think you my song too turbulent ? too warm 1 
Are passions, then, the pagans of the soul? 630 

Eeason alone baptized ! alone ordain'd 
To touch things sacred ? Oh for warmer still ! 
Guilt chills my zeal, and age benumbs my pow'rs : 
Oh for a humbler heart and prouder song ! 
Thou, my much-injured theme ! with that soft eye 635 

"Which melted o'er doom'd Salem, deign to look 
Compassion to the coldness of my breast. 
And pardon to the winter in my strain. 
O ye cold-hearted frozen formalists ! 
On such a theme 'tis impious to be calm ; 640 

Passion is reason, transport temper, here. 
Shall Heav'n, which gave us ardour, and has shown 
Her own for man so strongly, not disdain 
What smooth emollients in theology, 

Recumbent virtue's downy doctors preach, 645 

That prose of piety, a lukewarm praise ? 
Rise odours sweet from incense uninflamed ? 
Devotion, when lukewarm, is undevout ; 
But when it glows, its heat is struck to heav'n ; 
To human hearts her golden harps are strung; 650 

High heav'n's orchestra chants Amen to man. 

malists (639) who esteem it a great merit to be so governed by reason (631) 
as to be entirely devoid of emotion with regard to religious interests. 

627. Who halt indeed^ &c : A sarcastic description of the defective piety 
of those he is addressing ; the language being borrowed from the account of 
Jacob {Gen. 32 : 24 — 28) . In wrestling with the angel the patriarch was 
disabled by the dislocation of his thigh, in consequence of which he halted, 
or limped, in his walk. 

634. Prouder song: Loftier song. 

641. Temper: Moderation. 



NIGHT IV. 195 



LONGING FOR DEATH. 



Hear I, or dream I hear, theii* distant strain, 
Sweet to the soul, and tasting strong of heav'n, 
Soft wafted on celestial Pity's plume, 

Through the vast spaces of the univfer?*-. 655 

To cheer me in this melancholy gloom ? 
Oh when will death (now stingless) like a friend, 
Admit me of their choir ! Oh when will death 
This mould'ring old partition-wall throw do-v\Ti ? 
Give beings, one in nature, one abode ? 660 

O death divine ! that giv'st us to the skies ! 
Great futm-e ! glorious patron of the past 
And present, when shall I thy shrine adore ? 
From Nature's continent immensely wide, 
Immensely blest, this httle isle of life, 665 

This dark incarcerating colony 
Divides us. Happy day that breaks our chain ! 
That manumits ; that calls from exile home ; 
That leads to Nature's great metropolis, 

And re-admits us, through the guardian hand 670 

Of elder brothers, to our Father's throne, 
Who hears our advocate, and through his wounds 
Beholding man, allows that tender name. 
'Tis this makes Christian triumph a command ; 
'Tis this makes joy a duty to the wise. 675 

'Tis impious in a good man to be sad. 

THE TOUCH OF THE CROSS. 

Seest thou, Lorenzo, where hangs all our hope ? V 
Touch'd by the cross we hve, or more than die ; 

652. Dream I hear : Do I dream that I hear ? 

658. Of their choir : A member of their choir. 

C69. Meiropolis : Heaven. 

678. The cross becomes to us either an instrument of everlasting life, or 
the occasion of a doom that is more severe than death, or the dissolution of 
the body. 



196 THE COMPLAINT. 

That touch which touch'd not angels ; more divine 

Than that which touch'd confusion into form, C80 

And darkness into glory : partial touch ! 

Ineflfably pre-eminent regard ! 

Sacred to man, and sov'reign through the whole 

Long golden chain of miracles, which hangs 

From heav'n through all dm'ation, and supports, 685 

In one illustrious and amazing plan, 

Thy welfare. Nature, and thy God's renown ; 

That touch, with charm celestial, heals the soul 

Diseased, drives pain from guilt, lights hfe in death, 

Turns earth to heav'n, to heav'nly thrones transforms 690 

The ghastly ruins of the mould'ring tomb. 

THE SECOND ADVENT. 

Dost ask me when ? When He who died returns ; 
Returns, how changed ! where then the man of wo ? 
In glory's terrors all the Godhead burns, 

And all his courts, exhausted by the tide 695 

Of deities triumphant in his train, 
Leave a stupendous solitude in heav'n ; 
Replenish'd soon, replenish'd with increase 
Of pomp and multitude ; a radiant band 
Of angels new, of angels from the tomb. VOO 

Is this by fancy thrown remote ? and rise 
Dark doubts between the promise and event ? 
I send thee not to volumes for thy cure ; 
Read Nature ; Nature is a friend to truth ; 
Nature is Christian ; preaches to mankind, 705 

681. Partial touch : That touch (by the cross) which was confined to 
man {sacred to man, 683) and did not extend to angels. 

690-1. To heavenly thrones^ &c. : To heavenly forms of a high order, cor- 
responding to angels (700) , changes the ghastly bodies of buried saints. 
Compare note on 390. 

692. Returns: From heaven. 

705. Nature is Christian : Is accordant with Christianity in reference to 
this point. The comet, in her erratic flight, and ampler roimd yet sure return^ 



NIGHT IV. 



197 



And bids dead matter aid iis in our creed. 

Hast thou ne'er seen the comet's flaming flight ? 

Th' illustrious stranger passing, terror sheds 

On gazing nations from his fiery train 

Of length enormous, takes his ample round 710 

Thi-o' depths of ether ; coasts unnumber'd worlds, 

Of more than solar glory : doubles wide 

Heav'n's mighty cape ; and then revisits earth, 

From the long travel of a thousand years. 

Thus, at the destined period, shall return 715 

He, once on earth, who bids the comet blaze ; 

And, with him, all our triumph o'er the tomb. 

Nature is dumb on this important point, 
Or Hope precarious in low whisper breathes : 
Faith speaks aloud, distinct ; ev'n adders hear, 720 

But tm*n, and dart into the dark again. 
Faith builds a bridge across the gulf of Death, 
To break the shock blind Nature cannot shun. 
And lands Thought smoothly on the farther shore. 
Death's terror is the mountain Faith removes, 725 

That mountain-barrier between man and peace. 
'Tis Faith disarms Destruction, and absolves 
From ev'ry clam'rous charge the guiltless tomb. 

THE christian's FAITH IS RATIONAL. 

Why disbelieve, Lorenzo ? — ' Reason bids ; 
All-sacred Reason.' — Hold her sacred still ; 730 

Nor shalt thou want a rival in thy flame : 

is cited as an instance analogous to the Christian doctrine of the second ad- 
vent of the Son of God. 

718. Nature is dtimb. &c. : Not in regard to the second advent, for this 
would contradict previous assertions and illustration, but it is dumb in rela- 
tion to our triumph o'er the tomb (717) . 

729. " Reason bids^'' (me disbelieve) : This is said in reply by Lorenzo, the 
Sceptic. 

731. In thy flame: In thy ardent love of reason. The author claims as 



198 THE COMPLAINT. 

AU-sacred Reason ! source and soul of all 
Demanding praise on earth, or earth above ! 
My heart is thine : deep in its inmost folds 
Live thou with life ; hve dearer of the two. '735 

Wear I the blessed cross, by Fortune stamp'd 
On passive Nature before Thought was born ? 
My bii'th's blind bigot ! fired vnth local zeal ! 
No ; Reason re-baptized me when adult ; 
Weigh'd true and false in her impartial scale ; 740 

My heart became the convert of my head, 
And made that choice which once was but my fate. 
' On argument alone my faith is built :' 
Reason pursued is faith ; and unpursued. 
Where proof invites, 'tis reason then no more ; ' 745 

And such our proof, that, or our faith is right, 
Or reason hes, and Heav'n design'd it wrong. 
Absolve we this ? what then is blasphemy ? 
Fond as we are, and justly fond, of faith, 
Reason, we grant, demands our fii-st regard ; 760 

The mother honom-'d, as the daughter dear. 
Reason the root, fan- Faith is but the flow'r : 

strong a love for reason (though a Christian) , as Lorenzo affected to enter- 
tain. 

732. Soul of all: Indispensable attribute, or animating principle of all, &c 

735. With life : As long as life lasts. 

736. By Fortune stamped, &c. : Do I wear the cross which happened to 
be stamped on my passive nature before the development of reason ? In 
other words, am I Christian merely because it is the prevailing belief of my 
country and times ? My birth'' s blind bigot : Am I a Christian merely be- 
cause the circumstances of my birth rendered me so ? Reason re-baptized me 
when adult. When I reached adult age mj'- reason approved and confirmed 
my Christian baptism when an infant. My religion is based on conviction 
resulting from the examination of sufficient evidence, and is not derived 
merely from outward circumstances. 

743. This is Lorenzo's declaration; but our author shows that he is not 
entitled to credit when he makes it. 
746. Or our faith : Either our faith. 
748. Absolve: Justify. 



NIGHT IV. 199 

The fading flow'r shall die, but Reason Hves 

Immortal, as her Father in the skies. 

"When faith is virtue, reason makes it so. 755 

Wrong not the Chi'istian : think not reason yom^s ; 

'Tis reason our great Master holds so dear ; 

'Tis reason's injur'd rights his wrath resents ; 

'Tis reason's voice obey'd his glories crown : 

To give lost reason hfe, he pour'd his own. 760 

Believe, and show the reason of a man ; 

Believe, and taste the pleasure of a God ; 

Beheve, and look with triumph on the tomb. 

Thi'ough reason's wounds alone thy faith can die ; 

"Which dying, tenfold terror gives to death, ^05 

And dips in venom his twice-mortal sting. 

FALSE PRETENSIONS OF PHILOSOPHIC INFIDELITY. 

Learn hence what honours, what loud pseans, due, 
To those who push our antidote aside ; 
Those boasted friends to reason and to man, 
"Whose fatal love stabs every joy, and leaves 770 

Death's terror heighten'd gnawing at his heart. 
These pompous sons of reason idolized. 
And vilified at once ; of reason dead. 
Then deified as monarchs were of old ; 

756. Think not reason yours : Think not that reason belongs to you an 
infidel, and as such. 

764. Through reason's wounds alone : Through the wounds v/hich reason 
alone inflicts thy faith can be put to death. 

770. Fatallove: That is, to reason and to nnan. The author is speaking 
ironically. 

774. Deified as monarchs^ &c. : It was customary among the Romans and 
the Greeks to deify a multitude of men who had distinguished themselv^es 
by memorable achievements. After a certain time the kings, or other rulers 
of a country, were raised to the honours of divinity. Thus honoured by a 
base adulation were the successors of Alexander and the emperors of Rome. 
The latter, even in their life-time, were, in some instances, thus distinguish- 
ed, but more frequently after death, to secure the good- will of their descend- 
ants. The decree to deify originated in the Roman senate, or in othei 



200 THE COMPLAINT. 

What conduct plants proud laurels on their brow? 115 

While love of truth thro' all then* camp resounds, 

They draw Pride's cui-tain o'er the noon-tide ray, 

Spike up their inch of reason on the point 

Of philosophic wit, call'd Argument, 

And then exulting in their taper, cry, '780 

' Behold the sun !' and, Indian-hke, adore. 

Talk they of morals ? thou bleeding Love ! 
Thou maker of new morals to mankind ! 
The grand morality is love to Thee. 

As wise as Socrates, if such they were, 785 

(Nor will they 'bate of that subhme renown) 
As wise as Socrates, might justly stand 
The definition of a modern fool. 

A Christian is the highest style of man. 
And is there who the blessed cross wipes off, 100 

As a foul blot, from his dishonour' d brow ? 
If angels tremble, 'tis at such a sight : 
The wretch they quit, desponding of their charge. 
More struck with grief or wonder who can tell ? 

Ye sold to sense ! ye citizens of earth ! '795 

(For such alone the Christian banner fly) 
Know ye how wise your choice, how great your gain ? 
Behold the picture of earth's happiest man : 
' He calls his ^vish, it comes ; he sends it back. 
And says he call'd another ; that arrives, 800 

Meets the same welcome ; yet he stills calls on ; 
Till one calls him, who varies not his call, 
But holds him fast, in chains of darkness bound, 
Till Nature dies, and judgment sets him free ; 
A freedom far less welcome than his chain.' 805 

words, Roman senators were the manufacturers of this class of gods. It is 
thought hy some that the practice of deifying Roman emperors gave rise in 
the Papal church to the beatification of saints. 

786. ^Bate of: Abate, deduct anything from that sublime, &c. 

797. How wise : An example of irony, where the opposite is meant to 
that which is expressed. 



NIGHT IV. 201 

But grant man happy ; grant Wm happy long ; 
Add to life's highest prize her latest hour ; 
That houi', so late, is nimble in approach, 
That, hke a post, comes on in full career. 
How swift the shuttle flies that weaves thy shroud ! 810 

"Where is the fable of thy former years ? 
Thrown down the gulf of time ; as far from thee 
As they had ne'er been thine ; the day in hand, 
Like a bird struggling to get loose, is going ; 
Scarce now possess'd, so suddenly 'tis gone, 815 

And each swift moment fled, is death advanced 
By strides as swift. Eternity is all : 
And whose eternity ? who triumphs there ? 
Bathing for ever in the font of bUss ! 

Forever basking in the Deity ! 820 

Lorenzo, who ? — thy conscience shall reply. 

THE VOICE OF CONSCIENCE MUST BE HEARD. 

O give it leave to speak ; 'twill speak ere long, 
Thy leave unask'd : Lorenzo, hear it now. 
While useful its advice, its accent mild. 

By the gi-eat edict, the divine decree, 825 

Truth is deposited with man's last hour ; 
An honest hour, and faithful to her trust ; 
Truth, eldest daughter of the Deity ! 
Truth of his council when he made the worlds ! 
ISTor less, when he shall judge the worlds he made ; 830 

Though silent long, and sleeping ne'er so soimd, 
Smother'd with errors, and oppress'd with toys. 
That heav'n commission'd hour no sooner calls, 
But from her cavern in the soul's abyss, 
Like him they fable under ^tna whelm'd, 835 

807. Her latest how : Her continuance for the longest usual period. 

835. Like him they fable^ &c. : The giant Enceladus, who rebelled against 
Jupiter ; in fleeing from whom, Minerva threw upon him the island of Si- 
cily. The convulsions and eruptions of Mount Etna, according to the fable, 
9* 



202 THE COMPLAIN! T. 

The goddess biii-sts in thunder and in flame, 

Loudly con\inces, and severely pains. 

Dark daemons I discharge, and hydra-stings ; 

The keen vibration of bright truth — is hell ; 

Just definition ! though by schools untaught. 840 

Ye deaf to truth, peruse this pai-son'd page, 

And trust, for once, a prophet and a priest ; 

' Men may hve fools, but fools they cannot die.' 

were caused by his changing the position of his body. Thus Virgil, JEn. 
III. 578—582. 

" Fama est, Enceladi semiustTim fnlmine corpus 
Urgueri mole hac, ingentemque insuper jEtnam 
Impositam ruptis fiammam expirare caminis : 
Et, fessum quoties mutet latus, intremere omnem 
Mnrmure Trinacriam, et cselnm subtexere fumo." 

838. Bark dcBjnons, &c. : The truths T proclaim are formidable as demons, 
and painful as the stings of the fabled hydra, or serpentine monster of the 
Lernean marsh ; to destroy which was one of the celebrated labours of the 
Pagan god Hercules, 

841. Pai-son'd page : So called either because it was written by a clerg}'- 
man. or because it conveyed the sentiments of one. 

843. Men may live fools, &c. : Dr. Dodd introduces the Earl of Rochester 
as an instance of the truth of this remark, and observes, that here were parts 
so exalted by nature, and improved by study, and yet so corrupted and de- 
based by irreligion and vice, that he who was made to be one of the glories 
of his age, became a proverb : and if his repentance had not happily inter- 
posed, would have been one of the greatest reproaches of it. He well knew 
the small strength of that weak cause, whose arguments had so poisoned his 
mind ; and as at first he despised, so afterwards he abhorred them ; he felt 
the mischief, and saw the madness of their plan ; and hence, though he lived 
indeed to the scandal of many, he died as much to the edification of all those 
who saw him ; and because they were but a smaller number, he desired that, 
through the mouths and pens of his reverend friends, Dr. Burnet, and Mr. 
Parson, even when dead he might still speak good instruction to all. 
Thus, though he lived in heart, in writing, and in life a heinous sinner, he 
died with every hopeful symptom of a sincere and most exemplary peni- 
tence. 

" Men may live fools, but fools they cannot die.''^ 



NIGHT V, 



THE RELAPSE. 



Sistritoi tn tjit Et. inn. llii «nrl nf ITitrjifiEKt. 



LoRExzo ! to recriminate is just. 
Fondness for fame is avarice of air. 
I grant the man is vain who writes for praise. 
Praise no man e'er deserved, who sought no more. 

As just thy second charge. I grant the muse 5 

Has often blush'd at her degen'rate sons, 
Retam'd by sense to plead her filthy cause, ^ 
To raise the low, to magnify the mean, 

The Relapse : This title seems to indicate a relapse, or falling back, intc 
grief ; if our conclusion is correctly drawn from the passage 274 — 281 
Night V. 

2. Avarice of air : A fond and greedy desire of nothing more substantial 
than air- 

4. No more : No more than praise. 

5. Second charge : The first was, that he is a vain man who writes for 
praise or renown : the second charge is, that the muse has often blushed at 
the ignoble use to which some of her gifted sons have applied their talents. 



204 THE COMPLAINT. 

And subtilize the gross into refined ; 

As if to magic numbers' pow'rful cbarm 10 

'Twas given to make a civet of tbeir song 

Obscene, and sweeten ordure to perfume. 

"Wit, a true Pagan, deifies the brute. 

And lifts our swine-enjopnents from the mire. 

PLEASURE AND PRIDE, OF OPPOSITE TENDENCIES. 

The fact notorious, nor obscure the cause. 15 

We wear the chains of pleasure and of pride : 
These share the man, and these distract him too ; 
^-Draw different ways, and clash in their commands. 
i Pride, like an eagle, builds among the stars ; 
j } But Pleasure, lark-like, nests upon the ground. 20 

r%r\ Joys shared by brute creation Pride resents ; f 
' Pleasm'e embraces : man would both enjoy 

And both at once : a point how hard to gain ! 
But what can't Wit, when stung by strong desire ? 

WIT STRIVES TO RECONCILE THEM. 

Wit dares attempt this arduous enterprise. 25 

Since joys of sense can't rise to Reason's taste, 
In subtle Sophistry's laborious forge. 
Wit hammei's out a reason new, that stoops 
To sordid scenes, and meets them with applause. 
Wit calls the Graces the chaste zone to loose ; 30 

I^or less than a plump god to fill the bowl : 
A thousand phantoms and a thousand spells, 
A thousand opiates scatters to delude, 
To fascmate, inebriate, lay asleep, 

And the fool'd mind dehghtfully confound. 35 

Thus that which shock'd the judgment shocks no more : 

11. Civet: Perfume, consisting of a brown semi-fluid matter, found in a 
gland belonging to the civet cat. It yields an offensive odour, unless it be 
very much diluted : in that state, when combined with other perfumes, it 
greatly augments their energy. 



NIGHT V. 205 

That whicb gave Pride offence no more offends. 

Pleasure and Pride, by nature mortal foes, 

At war eternal which in man shall reign. 

By Wit's address patch up a fatal peace, 40 

And hand-in-hand lead on the rank debauch. 

From rank refined to dehcate and gay. 

Art, cursed Ai't ! wipes off th' indebted blush 

From JN'ature's cheek, and bronzes ev'ry shame. 

Man smiles in ruin, glories in his guilt, ' 45 

And Infamy stands candidate for praise. 

All wi-it by man in favom- of the soul, 
These sensual ethics far in bulk transcend. 
The flow'rs of eloquence profusely pour'd 
O'er spotted Vice, fill half the letter'd world. 50 

Can pow'rs of genius exorcise their page, 

43-46. Cursed Art^ &c. : A story is related, of an atheistical author, the 
Earl of Rochester (already referred to in a previous note), which strikingly 
confirms the sentiment uttered here by our author. This man, says Dr. 
Dodd, at a time when he lay dangerously sick, and had desired the assist- 
ance of a neighbouring curate, confessed to him with great contrition, that 
nothing sat more heavy at his heart, than the sense of his having seduced 
the age by his writings, and that their evil influence was likely to continue 
even after his death. The curate among other things, designed to allay his 
apparent agony of remorse, said to him, that he did well in being afflicted 
for the evil design with which he published his book, but that he ought to 
be very thankful that there was no danger of its doing any hurt ; that his 
cause was so very bad, and his arguments so weak, that he did not appre- 
hend any ill effects from it. The pride of the noble author was much of- 
fended by this and similar remarks from the faithful curate. The sick man 
recovered from that severe illness, and evinced the insincerity of his pro- 
fessed penitence at that period, by afterwards writing and publishing two 
or three other tracts with the same spirit, and, very luckily for mankind 
and his own reputation, with no belter acceptance or success. 

47. All : Everything ; in the objective case depending on the verb trans- 
cend. 

51. Exorcise their page: Deprive their page of its corrupting tendencies — 
an allusion to the base and malicious demons that possessed the bodies of 
men at the commencement of the Christian era, and which were exorcised, 
or driven out, by the power of Christ, and by that which he delegated to 
the apostles. 



206 THE COMPLAINT. 

And consecrate enormities with song ? 

But let not these inexpiahle strains 

Condemn the muse that knows her dignity, 

Nor meanly stops at time, but holds the world 55 

As 'tis in Natm-e's ample field, a point, 

A point in her esteem ; from whence to start, 

And run the round of univei*sal space, 

To visit being univei*sal there. 

And being's source, that utmost flight of mind ! 60 

Yet spite of this so vast cii'cumference, 

"Well knows but what is moral, nought is great. 

Sing syi'ens only ? do not angels sing ? 

There is in Poesy a decent pride. 

Which well becomes her when she speaks to Prose, 65 

Her younger sister, haply not more wise. 

55. M tinu : At the boundaries of time, treating only upon the affairs of this 
present life. 

63. Sy)-ens : Fabulous female goddesses, said to possess a most dangerous 
power over men by their bewitching songs. We have given in a former 
note a more full account of them. 

66. Her younger sister : The earliest literature of most ancient countries 
is in the poetic form. Dr. Blair, in his Lecture on the Origin and Progress 
of Poetry, has discussed this subject in a full and interesting manner. Some 
of his observations will here be given. It has been often said, and the con- 
curring voice of all antiquity aifirms, that Poetry is older than Prose : but 
in what sense this seemingly strange paradox holds true, has not always 
been well understood. There never certainly was any period of society in 
which men conversed together in poetical numbers. It was in very humble 
and scanty prose, as we may easily believe, that the first tribes carried on 
intercourse among themselves, relating to the wants and necessities of life. 
But from the very beginning of society, there were occasions on which they 
met together for feasts, sacrifices and public assemblies ; and on all such oc- 
casions, it is well known that music, song, and dance made their principal 
entertainment. Two particulars would early distinguish this language of 
song from that in vv'hich they conversed on the common occurrences of life; 
namely, an unusual arrangement of words, and the employment of bold 
figures of speech. 

The same impulse which prompted the enthusiastic, poetic style, prompt- 
ed a certain melody, or modulation of sound, suited - to the emotions ex- 
pressed. Music and poetry^ therefore, had the same rise ; they were 



NIGHT V. 207 



SERIOUS CHARACTER OF THE POEM. 

Tliiiik'st thou, Lorenzo, to find pastimes here ? 
"No guilty passion blown into a flame. 
No foible flatter'd, dignity disgraced, 

No fairy field of fiction, all on flower, 70 

No rainbow colours here, or silken tale ; 
But solemn counsels, images of awe. 
Truths which Eternity lets fall on man 
With double weight, thro' these revolving spheres. 
This death-deep silence, and incumbent shade ; 75 

Thoughts such as shall revisit your last hour, 
Visit uncall'd, and five when life expires ; 
And thy dark pencil, Midnight ! darker still 
In melancholy dipp'd, embrowns the whole. 

Yet this, even this, my laughter-lo\ang friends, 80 

Lorenzo ! and thy brothers of the smile ! 

prompted by the same occasions ; they were united in song, and tended to 
heighten and exalt each other. The first poets sung their own verses ; 
and hence the beginning of what we call versification, or words arranged 
in a more artful order than prose, so as to be suited to some tune or melody. 
It thus appears that the first compositions which were either recorded by- 
writing, or transmitted by tradition, could be no other than poetical compo- 
sitions. No other could draw the attention of men in their rude, uncivilized 
state. Indeed, they knew no other. The earliest accounts which history 
gives us of all nations bear testimony to these facts. In the first ages of 
Greece, priests, philosophers, and statesmen, all delivered their instructions 
in poetry. 

67. He7-e : In this poem. 

79. Evibi-owns : Darkens. A corresponding word is much used by the 
Italians to describe anything shaded. Milton uses it in his Par. Lost. Bk. 
IV. 245—46. 

" And where the unpiorc'd shade 
ImbrowrCd the noontide bow'rs." 

He presents the same idea in Book IX. 1085 — 88. 

" In some glade 
Obscured, where highest woods impenetrable 
To star or sun-light, spread their umbrage broad 
And hrotcn as evening !" 



208 THE COMPLAINT. 

If what imports you most can most engage, 

Shall steal your ear, and chain you to my song. 

Or if you fail me, know the wise shall taste 

The truths I sing ; the truths I sing shall feel, 85 

And, feehng, give assent ; and then* assent 

Is ample recompense ; is more than praise. 

But chiefly thine, O Litchfield ! nor mistake ! 

Think not unintroduced I force my way ; 

Narcissa, not unknown, not unallied 90 

By vu'tue, or by blood, illustrious youth ! 

To thee, from blooming amaranthine bow'i-s, 

"Where all the language Harmony, descends 

Uncall'd, and asks admittance for the muse : 

A muse that will not pain thee with thy praise : 93 

Thy praise she di*ops, by nobler still inspued. 



O thou, blest Spirit ! whether the supreme. 

Great antemundane Father ! in whose breast j 

Embryo creation, unborn being, dwelt, J 

And all its various revolutions roU'd 100 [ 

Present, though futm-e ; prior to themselves ; \ 

Whose breath can blow it into nought again ; | 

Or, from his throne some delegated pow'r, j 

Who, studious of our peace, dost turn the thought ' 

From vain and vile, to solid and sublime ! 105 i 

Unseen thou lead'st me to dehcious 'draughts 

Of inspiration, from a purer stream, ) 

And ftdler of the God than that which bm-st j 
From famed Castaha ; nor is yet allay'd 

98. Antemundane : Existing before the world. 

109. Famed Castalia : A fountain, sacred to the Muses, on Mount Par- | 

nassus, in Greece, being supplied from the perpetual snows of the summits \ 

of that mountain. The water is clear and refreshing, and was anciently i 

used by the Pythia, and the oracular priests at Delphi in its neighbourhood. ' 

There was another fountain of the same name in Syria, near Daphne : the jj 



NIGHT V. 209 

My sacred tliirst, though long my soiil has ranged 110 

Through pleasing paths of moral and divine, 
By thee sustain'd, and lighted by the stai-s. 

THE ADVANTAGES OF NIGHT OVER THOSE OF DAY. 

By them best hghted are the paths of thought ; 
Nights are their days, their most illumined hours ! 
By day the soul, o'erborne byhfe's career, 115 

Stunn'd by the din, and giddy ^nth the glare, 
Eeels far from reason, jostled by the throng. 
By day the soul is passive, all her thoughts 
Imposed, precarious, broken, ere mature. 

By night, from objects free, from passion cool, 120 

Thoughts uncontroll'd, and unimpress'd, the births 
Of pure election, arbitrary range, 
Not to the Hmits of one world confined. 
But fi*om ethereal travels hght on earth. 
As voyagers drop anchor for repose, 125 

Let Indians, and the gay, like Indians, fond 
Of feather'd fopperies, the sun adore ; 
Darkness has more divinity for me ; 
It strikes thought inward ; it drives back the soul 
To settle on hei-self, om* point supreme ! 130 

There hes our theatre; there sits our judge. 
Darkness the curtain drops o'er hfe's dull scene ; 
'Tis the kind hand of Providence stretch'd out 
'Twixt man and vanity ; 'tis Reason's reign, 
And Virtue's too ; these tutelary shades 135 

Aj*e man's asylum from the tainted throng. 
Night is the good man's friend, and guardian too, 
It no less rescues vhtue than inspires. 

waters of which were supposed to impart a knowledge of futurity to those 
who drank them. 

138. Rescues virtue than inspires : While all this is true it must neverthe- 
less be conceded, that under cover of night vicious deeds are more conve- 
niently and securely performed than under the light of the sun. 



210 THE COMPLAINT. 

Virtue, for ever frail as fair, below, 
Her tender nature suffers in the crowd, 140 

Nor touches on the world without a stain. 
The world's infectious ; few bring back at eve. 
Immaculate, the mannei*s of the morn. 
Something we thought, is blotted ; we resolved. 
Is shaken ; we renounced, returns again. 145 

Each salutation may slide in a sin 
Unthought before, or fix a former flaw. 
Nor is it strange ; light, motion, concouKe, noise, 
AU scatter us abroad. Thought, outward-bound, 
Neglectful of om- home afiaire, flies off 150 

In fume and dissipation, quits her charge. 
And leaves the breast unguarded to the foe. 

Present example gets within our guard. 
And acts with double force, by few repell'd. 
Ambition fii-es ambition ; love of gain 155 

Strikes, like a pestilence, from breast to breast : 
Riot, pride, perfidy, blue vapours breathe. 
And inhumanity is caught from man, 
From smihng man ! A shght, a single glance. 
And shot at random, often has brought home 160 

A sudden fever to the thi'obbing heart 
Of envy, rancom-, or impure desire. 
We see, we hear, with peril ; safety dwells 
Remote from multitude. The world's a school 
Of wi'ong, and what proficients swami around ! 165 

We must or imitate or disapprove ; 
Must list as then* accomplices or foes : 
That stains our innocence, this wounds our peace. 
From Nature's birth, hence. Wisdom has been smit 
With sweet recess, and languish'd foi* the shade. 170 

This sacred shade and solitude, what is it ? 
'Tis the felt presence of the Deity. 

166. Or: Either. 

1(59-70. Smit with nveet recess: Fond of sweet retirement, or seclnpion 
from company. 



NIGHT V. 211 

Few are tlie faults we flatter when alone. 

Vice sinks in her allurements, is ungilt, 

And looks, like other objects, black by night. 175 

By night an atheist half believes a God. 

Night is fair Virtue's immemorial friend. 
The conscious moon, through ev'ry distant age, • 

Has held a lamp to Wisdom, and let fall 
On Contemplation's eye her purging ray. 180 

The famed Athenian, he who wooed from heaven 
Philosophy the fan, to dwell with men, 
And form their manners, not inflame their pride ; 
While o'er his head, as fearful to molest 

His lab'ring mind, the stars in silence slide, 185 

And seem all gazing on their future guest. 
See him sohciting his ardent suit 
In private audience ; all the hvelong night, 
Rigid in thought, and motionless he stands, 
Nor quits his theme or posture till the sun 190 

(Rude drunkard ! rising rosy from the main) 
Disturbs his nobler intellectual beam. 
And gives him to the tmiiult of the world. 
Hail, precious moments ! stol'n from the black waste 

181. The famed Athenian : It is probable that our author here had Socrates 
in view. To him, at least, the description well applies. Quintilian calls 
him fons philosophorum (the fountain of philosophers) . As Homer was 
esteemed by the ancients the father of poetry, so Socrates W£is regarded as 
the father of moral philosophy, the different sects acknowledging him as 
their common parent. The account of him which Milton gives, in the Pa- 
radise Regained, will always be read with peculiar satisfaction. Book IV. 
272—280. 

" To sage Philosophy next lend thine ear, 

FroEQ heav"n descended to the low-roof d house 

Of Socrates ; see there his tenement 

Whom well inspir'd the oracle pronoimc'd 

Wisest of men ; from whose mouth issued forth 

Mellifluous streams that water"d all the schools 

Of Academics old and new, \\ith those 

Surnam'd Peripateticks, and the sect 

Epicurean, and the Stoick severe.'' 

191. The main : The sea. 



212 THE COMPLAINT. 

Of murder'd time ! auspicious Midniglit, hail! 195 

The world excluded, ev'iy passion hush'd, 

And open'd a calm intercourse with heav'n. 

Here the soul sits in council, ponders past, 

Predestines future actions ; sees, not feels, 

Tumultuous hfe, and reasons with the storm ; 200 

AH her hes answei-s, and thinks down her charms. 

"What awful joy ! what mental liberty ! 
I am not pent in darkness ; rather say 
(If not too bold) in darkness I'm embower'd. 
Dehghtfiil gloom ! the clust'ring thoughts around 205 

Spontaneous rise, and blossom in the shade, 
But droop by day, and sicken in the sun. 
Thought borrows hght elsewhere : from that first fire, 
Fountain of animation ! whence descends 
Urania, my celestial guest ! who deigns 210 

195. Of murdered time: The epithet here seems to be applied unwisely. 
Man, considered as subject to physical necessities, does not murder that time 
which he passes in needful repose. It is necessary to his intellectual as well 
as physical vigor ; and if he may sleep at any time, he cannot be blamed for 
taking repose at midnight, the period of which our author speaks, as stolen 
by him from the black waste of murdered time. 

206. Spontaneous rise : We learn from this passage that our author had 
greater freedom and even luxury of thought in the delightful gloom of mid- 
night than amid the glory of sun-light. 

210. Urania^ &c. : Our author here imitates Milton, who addresses Ura- 
nia as a goddess, or heavenly personage, entreats her to descend from heaven, 
and thus, in part, describes her : — 

"For thoTi 
Nor of the Muses nine, nor on the top 
Of old Olympus dwelFst, but heavenly horn : 
Before the hills appeared, or fountain flow'd, 
Thou with eternal Wisdom didst converse, 
Wisdom thy sister, and with her didst play 
In presence of th' Almighty Father, pleas'd 
With thy celestial song," &c. 

He then, like our author, speaks of the nightly visits with which Urania 
favoured him. 

" In darkness, and with dangers compass'd round, 
And solitude ; yet not alone, while thou 



NIGHT V. ' 213 

Nightly to visit me, so mean ; and now, 

Conscious how needful disciphne to man. 

From pleasing dalliance with the charms of night. 

My wand'ring thought recalls, to what excites 

Far other beat of heart, Narcissa's tomb ! 215 

FLUCTUATIONS IN HUMAN FEELING. 

Or is it feeble Nature calls me back. 
And breaks my spuit into grief again ? 
Is it a Stygian vapour in my blood ? 
A cold slow puddle creeping through my veins ? 
Or is it thus with all men ? — Thus with all. 220 

"What are we ? how unequal ! now we soar. 
And now we sink. To be the same transcends 
Om* present prowess. Dearly pays the soul 
For lodging ill ; too dearly rents her clay. 
Reason, a baffled counsellor 1 but adds 225 

The blush of weakness to the bane of wo. 
The noblest spirit, fighting her hard fate 
In this damp, dusky region, charged with storms. 
But feebly flutters, yet untaught to fly ; 

Or, flying, short her flight, and sure her fall : 230 

Our utmost strength, when down, to rise again. 
And not to yield, though beaten, all our praise. 

'Tis vain to seek in men for more than man. 
Though proud in promise, big in previous thought, 

Visit'st my slumbers nightly, or when morn 
Purples the east : still govern thou my song, 
Urania."— P«r. Lost, Bk. VII. 5—12, 2T— 31. 

218. Stygian vapour : An allusion is here made to a fabulous river of the 
lower world. The classic poets describe it as a broad, dull, sluggish, and 
very shallow stream, hence sometimes called a lake, or a fen. When 
any of the Pagan gods became guilty of perjury, they were obliged to take 
a draught of the Stygian water, vv'hich, for a whole year, had the effect of 
taking away sensibility and power of motion. To this fable the language 
of our author bears a strong allusion. 

224. Lodging ill : 111 lodging, the body. 



214 THE COMPLAINT. 

Experience damps om- triumph. I, who late 235 

Emerging from the shadows of the grave, 

Where grief detain'd me pris'uer, moimting high, 

Threw wide the gates of everlasting day, 

And call'd mankind to glory, shook oflf pain, 

Mortahty shook oflf, in ether pm-e, 240 

And struck the stars, now feel my spiiits fail ; 

They drop me from the zenith ; down I rush, 

Like him whom fable fledged with waxen wings, 

In sorrow drown'd — but not in sorrow lost. 

How ^^Tetched is the man who never mom-n'd ! 245 

I dive for precious pearl iu sorrow's stream : 

Not so the thoughtless man that only grieves. 

Takes all the torment, and rejects the gain ; 

(Inestimable gain) and gives Heav'n leave 

To make him but more wi'etched, not more wise. 250 

PROFICIENCY MADE IN THE SCHOOL OF GRIEF. 

If wisdom is our lesson (and what else 
Ennobles man ? what else have angek learn'd ?) 
Grief ! more proficients in thy school are made, 
Than genius or proud learning e'er could boast. 
Voracious learning, often over-fed, 255 

Digests not into sense her motley meal. 
This bookcase, with dark booty almost burst 
This forager on othei-s' msdom, leaves 

243. With waxen wings. &c. : Reference is herejnade to Icarus, the son 
of Daedalus, an Athenian, famed for his skill in architecture and statuary. 
In consequence of a murder which he committed at Athens, Daedalus was 
banished, took up his residence in Crete, where he offended Minos the king 
and was imprisoned. He determined to flee from Crete, having escaped 
from his confinement : but being unable to escape by sea he resolved to 
attempt flight through the air. He made, accordingly, wings of feathers 
united by wax, for himself and his son Icarus. They mounted into the air 
as the fable relates ; but Icarus, ascending too high, and approaching too near 
the sun, its heat melted the wax, and the youth fell into the sea and was 
drowned. Daedalus arrived safely in Sicily. — Anthon's CI. Die. 



NIGHT V. 215 

Her native farm, her reason, quite untiU'd. 
With mix'd maniu'e she surfeits the rank soil, 260 

Dung'd but not dress'd, and rich to beggary : 
A pomp untameable of weeds preva.ils : 
Her servant's wealth encumber'd Wisdom mourns. 
And what says Genius ? ' Let the dull be wise.' 
Genius, too hard for right, can prove it wi'ong, 265 

And loves to boast, where blush men less inspired. 
It pleads exemption from the laws of sense, 
Considers reason as a leveller, ' 

And scorns to share a blessing with the crowd. 
That wise it could be, thinks an ample claim 270 

To glory, and to pleasure gives the rest. 
Crassus but sleeps, Ardelio is undone. 
Wisdom less shudders at a fool than wit. 

263. Her servant's wealth : The wealth of Learning, the servant of Wis- 
dom. 

265. Too hard for rights &c. : Too hardened to do right ■ or, too obstinate 
to adopt what is right, can prove the right wrong for the purpose of self- jus- 
tification. 

267. Sense: Com nnion sense or judgment. 

272. Crassus but sleeps^ &c. : In the use of this fictitious name there 
seems to be an aJlusion to the Roman Crassus, the most finished speaker 
that had, up to his time, adorned the Roman forum. The meaning of our 
author in the passage seems to be this — " Genius," so far as his talents and 
attainments are concerned, may be a very Crassus, yet he does not employ 
them wisely — '"'• Crassus but sleeps," but in other respects, in the gratifica- 
tion of his appetites and passions, he even goes beyond Ardelio, a name used 
as a representative of some notorious libertine. 

Or, perhaps, the author's meaning may be more accurately explained 
thus : — " Genius," so far as his capacity for a wise course of action is con- 
cerned (indicated under the name of Crassus) is asleep ; he does not exert 
it; but such is the manner in which his other faculties are employed, and 
his propensities and inclinations are gratified, that he is undone, he is a ruined 
man, described under the name of Ardelio. Genius pleads the fact that 
it could be wise (270) an ample claim to glory, even while it pursues an oppo- 
site course, by yielding itself to pleasure (271). And our author justly 
remarks that wisdom is less shocked at a fool than at a wit who thus pros- 
titutes his high endowments. 



21G THE COMPLAINT. 

But wisdoii] smiles, when humbled mortals weep. 
When sorrow womids the breast, as ploughs the glebe, 2 To 
And hearts obdurate feel her soft'ning shower : 
Her seed celestial, then, glad wisdom sows ; 
Her golden harvest triumphs in the soil. 
If so, Narcissa, welcome my Relapse ; 

I'll raise a tax on my calamity, 280 

And reap rich compensation from my pain. 
I'll range the plenteous intellectual field, 
And gather ev'ry thought of sov'reign pow'r 
To chase the moral maladies of man ; 

Thoughts which may bear transplanting to the skies, 285 

Though natives of this coarse penurious soil ; 
Nor wholly wither there where seraphs sing, 
Refined, exalted, not annull'd, in heav'n : 
Reason, the sun that gives them birth, the same 
In either clime, though more illustrious there. 290 

These, choicely cull'd and elegantly ranged, 
Shall form a garland for JSTarcissa's tomb, 
And, peradventure, of no fading flow'rs. 

Say, on what themes shall puzzled choice descend ? 
' Th' importance of contemplating the tomb ; 29.5 

Why men decline it ; suicide's foul bhth ; 
The various kinds of grief; the faults of age ; 
And death's dread character — invite my song.' 

THE IMPORTANCE OF OUR END SURVEYED. 

And, first, th' importance of our end survey'd. 
Friends counsel quick dismission of our grief. 300 

Mistaken kindness ! our hearts heal too soon. 
Are they more kind than He who struck the blow ? 
Who bid it do his errand in our hearts, 
And banish peace, till nobler guests arrive, 

274. Wisdom smiles : Smiles in token of approval. 

275. Jls ploughs wound the glebe. 

279. My Relapse: My falhng back (into a state of grief). 
288. AnnuWd: Destroyed. 



NIGHT \. 



217 



And bring it back a true and endless pea.ce ? 305 

Calamities are friends : as glaring day 

Of these unnumber'd lustres robs our sight, 

Prosperity puts out unnumber'd thoughts 

Of import high, and light divine to man. 

The man how bless'd, who, sick of gaudy scenes, 310 

(Scenes apt to thrust between us and ourselves !) 
Is led by choice to take his fav'rite walk 
Beneath Death's gloomy, silent, cypress shades, 
Unpierced by Vanity's fantastic ray ; 

To read his monuments, to weigh his dust, 315 

Visit his vaults, and dwell among the tombs ! 
Lorenzo, read with me Narcissa's stone ; 
(Narcissa was thy fav'rite !) let us read 
Her moral stone ; few doctors preach so well ; 
Few orators so tenderly can touch 320 

The feeling heart. What pathos in the date ! 
Apt words can strike ; and yet in them we see 
Faint images of what we here enjoy. 
What cause have we to build on length of life ? 
Temptations seize when fear is laid asleep, 325 

And ill foreboded is our strongest guard. 

DESCRIPTION OF TRUTH. 

See from her tomb, as from an humble shrine, 

307. Lustres : Stars. The simile here employed is exceedingly beautiful 
and expressive. Prosperity is compared to the bright sunshine of day, 
while there is an implied comparison of adversity to the darkness of night. 

312. Fav'rite walk: Dr. Young preferred a walk in the church-yard to 
one in any other locality. See his memoir. 

313. Cypress shades : The cypress, a dark evergreen, is well adapted in its 
appearance to the sombre associations of the grave-yard. 

" Jubet cupressos fmiebres." — Ror. 

319. Her moral stone : Her moral grave-stone or monument, by which he 
means probably, the moral lessons communicated by the early date upon her 
monument (321) 

^26. El foreboded : Evil anticipated or apprehended, 
10 



218 THE COMPLAINT. 

Truth, radiant goddess, sallies on my soul, 

And puts delusion's dusky train to flight ; 

Dispels the mist our sultry passions raise 330 

From objects low, terrestrial, and obscene. 

And shows the real estimate of things, 

Which no man, unafflicted, ever say/ ; 

Pulls off the A^eil from vu'tue's rising charms ; 

Detects temptation in a thousand lies. 335 

Truth bids me look on men as autumn leaves. 

And aU they bleed for, as the summer's dust 

Driven by the whirlwind : lighted by her beams, 

I widen my homon, gain new pow'rs. 

See things in^^sible, feel things remote, 340 

Am present with futurities : think nought 

To man so foreign as the joys possess'd ; 

Nought so much his as those beyond the grave. 

HOW WORLDLY DIFFERS FROM DIVINE WISDOM. 

No folly keeps its colour in her sight ; 
Pale worldly wisdom loses all her charms ; 345 

In pompous promise from her schemes profound, 
K futm-e fate she plans, 'tis all in leaves, 

343. His: Adapted to him. The foregoing description of truth takes 
rank with the fi-nest passages in the poem, a^nd is deserving of close study. 

347-48. In leaves, like Sibyl: The Sibyls were certain females supposed to 
be inspired to deliver predictions of future events, living at various periods 
and in diiFerent countries. The allusion is here made to the one at Cumac, 
in Italy, who was accustomed to write her predictions on leaves, and place 
them at the entrance of her cave ; and it became necessary for those who 
consulted her to lay hold of these leaves, in the order in which she had 
placed them, before the wind should disturb them, and thus breaking the 
connexion, render their meaning unintelligible. 

In the Third Book of the ^neid the circumstance is thus described— 
443—452. 

" Insanam vatem adspicies, qiiaz rupe sub ima 
Fata canit, foliisque notas et nomina mandat. 
Qusecumque in foliis descripsit carinina virgo, 
Digerit in nnmerum, atque antro scclusa relinquit : 
Ilia manent immota locis, ncque ab ordine ceduut. 
Verum eadem, verso tenuis qnum cardino vcntus 



NIGHT V. 



219 



Like Sibyl, unsubstantial fleeting bliss ! 

At the first blast it vanishes in air. 

Not so, celestial. Would'st thou know, Lorenzo, 350 

How differ worldly wisdom and divine ? 

Just as the waning and the waxing moon : 

More empty worldly wisdom ev'ry day ; 

And ev'ry day more fair her rival shines. 

When later, there's less time to play the fool. 355 

Soon our whole term for wisdom is expired, 

(Thou know'st she calls no council in the grave) 

And everlasting fool is writ in fire. 

Or real wisdom wafts us to the skies. v^ 

As worldly schemes resemble Sibyl's leaves, 360 

The good man's days to Sibyl's books compare, 
(In ancient story read, thou know'st the tale) 
In price still rising as in number less. 
Inestimable quite his final hour. 

For that, who thrones can offer, offer thrones ; 365 

Insolvent worlds the pm-chase cannot pay. 

Impulit, et teneras turbavit janua frondes, 
Nunquam deinde cavo volitantia prendere saxo, 
Nee revocare situs, aut jungere carmina cm-at. 
Ineonsulti abeunt, sedemque odere sibylliB." 
So in the sixth Book, 74-6. 

" Foliis tantum ne carmina man da, 
Ne turbata volent rapidis ludibria veutis : 
Ipsa canas, oro." 

361. SibyPs books : Allusion is here made to an interesting Roman legend 
connected with one of the Sihyls, which we will give in the words of Prof. 
Anthon. She came to the palace of Tarquin II. with nine volumes, which 
she offered to sell for a very high price. The monarch declined the offer 
and she immediately disappeared, and burned three of the volunes. Return- 
ing soon after, she asked the same price for the remaining six books ; and, 
when Tarquin again refused to buy them, she burned three more, and still 
persisted in demanding the same sum of money for the three that were left* 
This extraordinary behaviour astonished the monarch, and, with the advice 
of the augurs, he bought the books ; upon which the Sibyl immediately dis- 
appeared, and was never seen after. Those books were preserved with 
great care, and called the Sibylline verses. A college of priests was appointed 
to have charge of them, and they were consulted with the greatest solemnity 
when the state seemed to be in danger. 



220 THE COMPLAINT. 

* Oh, let me die his death !' all nature cries. 

' Then live his life.' — ^All natm-e falters there ; 

Our gi-eat physician daily to consult, 

To commune with the gi-ave, our only cure. 370 

What gi-ave prescribes the best ? — A friend's ; and yet 
From a friend's grave how soon we disengage 1 
E'en to the dearest, as his marble, cold. 
Why are friends ra^ish'd from us ? 'Tis to bind, 
By soft affection's ties, on^hnman hearts 375 

The thought of death, which reason, too supine, 
Or misemploy'd, so rarely fastens there. 
'Nov reason, nor affection, no, nor both 
Combined, can break the witchcrafts of the world. 
Behold th' inexorable hour at hand ! 380 

Behold th' inexorable hour forgot ! 
And to forget it the chief aim of life. 
Though well to ponder it is hfe's chief end. 

DEATH, EVER AN UNEXPECTED GUEST. 

Is death, that ever threat'ning, ne'er remote, 
That all-important, and that only sure, 385 

(Come when he will) an unexpected guest ? 
Nay, though invited by the loudest calls 
Of bhnd imprudence, unexpected still ; 
Though num'rous messengei's are sent before 
To warn his great arrival. What the cause, 390 

The wondrous cause, of this mysterious iU ? 
All heav'n looks do\^Ti, astonish'd at the sight. 

Is it that hfe has sown her joys so thick, 
We can't thrust in a single care between ? 
Is it that life has such a swarm of cares, 395 

The thought of death can't enter for the throng ? 
Is it that time steals on with down}^ feet, 
Nor wakes indulgence from her golden di*eam ? 

367. This was the language of Balaam — " Let me die the death of the 
righteous, and let my last end be like his." — Numb. 23 : 10. 



NIGHT V. 221 

To-day is so like yesterday it cheats : 

We take the lying sister for the same. 400 

Life glides away, Lorenzo, like a brook, 

For ever changing, unperceived the change. 

In the same brook none ever bathed him twice ; 

To the same life none ever twice awoke. 

We call the brook the same ; the same we think 405 

Our life, though still more rapid in its flow ; 

Nor mark the much, irrevocably lapsed. 

And mingled with the sea. Or shall we say 

(Retaining still the brook to bear us on,) 

That hfe is hke a vessel on the stream ? 410 

In hfe embark'd, we smoothly down the tide 

Of time descend, but not on time intent ; 

Amused, unconscious of the gliding wave ; 

TiU on a sudden we perceive a shock : 

We start, awake, look out ; what see we there ? 41.5 

Our brittle bark is burst on Charon's shore. 

Is this the cause death flies all human thought ? 
Or is it judgment, by the will struck bhnd, 
That domineering mistress of the soul ! 

401. Like a brook : What can be more beautiful, more striking, more per- 
fect, than this watery image of human life ? 

407. Lapsed : Passed away. 

416. Charon's shore: The shore of death. The author here alludes to 
the Roman story of one of the deities of the lower world whose office it was 
to conduct the souls of deceased men in a boat across the Stygian lake to 
receive sentence from the judges of Pluto's gloomy dominions. He received 
for this service an obolus from each passenger ; and hence the ancients were 
careful to put this sum of money in the mouth of their deceased friends. 

Charon is thus described by Virgil in his ^Eneid, Bk. YI. 298—304. 

' Portitor lias horrendus aquas et fliunina servat 
Terribili sqiialore Charon : cui plurima mento 
Canities inculta jacet ; staot lumina flamma ; 
Sordidus ex humeris nodo dependet amictus. 
Ipse ratem conto subigit, velisque ministrat, 
Et feiTuginea subvectat corpora cymba ; 
Jam senior, sed cruda deo viridisque senectns. 
Hue on mis tui-ba ad ripas, ifec." 



222 -i^- THE COMPLAINT. 

Like him so strong, by Delilah the fair ? 420 

Or is it fear turns startled reason back, 

From looking down a precipice so steep ? 

'Tis dreadful ; and the dread is wisely placed, 

By nature, conscious of the make of man. 

A dreadful friend it is, a terror kind, 425 

A flaming .sword, to guard the tree of hfe. 

By that unawed, in life's most smiling hour, 

The good man would repine ; would suffer joys, 

And burn impatient for his promised skies. 

The bad, on each punctilious pique of pride, 430 

Or gloom of humour, would give rage the rein ; 

Bound o'er the barrier, rush into the dark. 

And mar the schemes of Providence below. 

BRITAIN INFAMOUS FOR SELF-MURDERS. 

What groan was that, Lorenzo ? — Furies ! rise ; 
And drown in your less execrable yell, 435 

Britannia's shame. There took her gloomy flight, 
On wing impetuous, a black sullen soul. 
Blasted from hell, with horrid lust of death. 
Thy friend, the brave, the gallant Altamont, 
So call'd, so thought, — and then he fled the field. 440 

Less base the fear of death than fear of life. 
O Britain ! infamous for suicide ! 
An island, in thy manners, far disjoin'd 
From the whole world of rationals beside ! 
In ambient waves plunge thy polluted head, 445 

Wash the dire stain, nor shock the continent. 

420. Like him^ &c. : The allusion to Samson, the Hebrew, will easily be 
recognized. 

426. ^flaming sword : Language copied from Gen. 3 : 24. 

428. Suffer Joys : Would endure earthly joys, but not relish them, through 
his impatience for those of his promised skies. 

432. Rush into the dark : Commit self-murder. 

445. In ambient waves : In the waves that encompass thee. 



NIGHT V. 223 

But thou be shock'd, while I detect the cause 
Of self-assault, expose the monster's birth, 
And bid abhorrence hiss it round the world. 
Blame not thy chme, nor chide the distant sun ; 450 

The sun is innocent, thy clime absolved ; 
Immoral cHmes kind nature never made. 
The cause I sing in Eden might prevail ; 
And proves it is thy folly, not thy fate. 

The soul of man, (let man in homage bow 455 

Who names his soul,) a native of the skies ! 
High-born and free, her freedom should maintain, 
Unsold, unmortgaged for earth's little bribes. 
Th' illustrious stranger, in this foreign land, 
Like strangers, jealous of her dignity, 460 

Studious of home, and ardent to return. 
Of earth suspicious, earth's enchanted cup 
With cool reserve light touching, should indulge 
On immortahty her godlike taste ; 
There take large draughts ; make her chief banquet there. 465 

But some reject this sustenance divine ; 
To beggarly vile appetites descend ; 
Ask alms of earth for guests that came from heav'n ; 
Sink into slaves ; and sell for present hhe 
Their rich reversion, and (what shai-es its fate) 470 

Then* native freedom to the .prince who sways 
This nether world. And when his pajanents fail, 
When his foul basket gorges them no more. 
Or their pall'd palates loathe the basket full. 
Are instantly, vdth wild demoniac rage, 4*75 

For breaking all the chains of Providence ; 
And bursting their confinement, though fast barr'd 
By laws divine and human ; guarded strong 

449. Abhorrence : This word is well personified here. 
451. Absolved: Free from blame. 

470. Reversion : Title to future enjoyments and possessions. 
"471. Prince: Satan. See Ephes. 2:2. 2 Cor. 4 : 4. 



224 THE COMPLAINT. 

With horrors double to defend the pass, 

The blackest, nature or dire guilt can raise ; 480 

And moated round with fathomless destruction, 

Sure to receive, and whelm them in their fall. 

Such, Britons ! is the cause, to you unknown, 
Or, worse, o'erlook'd ; o'erlook'd by magistrates, 
Thus criminals themselves. I grant the deed 485 

Is madness ; but the madness of the heart. 
And what is that ? Our utmost bound of guilt, 
A sensual unreflecting life is big 
"With monstrous births ; and suicide, to crown 
The black infernal brood. The bold to break 490 

Heav'n's law supreme, and desperately rush 
Through sacred nature's murder on theh own. 
Because they never think of death, they die. 
'Tis equally man's duty, glory, gain. 
At once to shun and meditate his end. 495 

THE SOLEMN DEATH-SCENE. 

When by the bed of languishment we sit, 
(The seat of vvdsdom ! if our choice, not fate) 
Or o'er our dying friends in anguish hang, 
Wipe the cold dew, or stay the sinking head, 
Number their moments, and in ev'ry clock 500 

Start at the voice of an eternity ; 
See the dim lamp of life just feebly lift 
An agonizing beam, at us to gaze, 
Then sink again, and quiver into death, . 

That most pathetic herald of our own ; 505 

How read we such sad scenes ? As sent to man 
In perfect vengeance ? No ; in pity sent. 
To melt him down, hke wax, and then impress, 
Indehble, death's image on his heart ; 

Bleeding for othei-s, trembling for himself 510 

We bleed, we tremble, we forget, we smile. 
The mind turns fool before the cheek is dry. 



NIGHT V. 225 

Our quick-returning folly cancels all ; 
As the tide rushing rases what is writ 
In yielding sands, and smoothes the letter'd shore. 515 

THE PHILOSOPHY OF TEARS ; THEIR CAUSE. 

Lorenzo ? hast thou ever weighed a sigh ? 
Or studied the philosophy of tears ? 
(A science yet unlectured in our schools !) 
Hast thou descended deep into the breast, 
And seen their source ? If not, descend with me, 520 

And trace these briny riv'lets to their springs. 

Our fun'ral tears from difF'rent causes rise : 
As if from separate cisterns in the soul. 
Of various kinds they flow. From tender hearts. 
By soft contagion call'd, some burst at once, 525 

And stream obsequious to the leading eye. 
Some ask more time, by curious art distill'd. 
Some hearts, in secret hard, unapt to melt. 
Struck by the magic of the public eye, 
\ Like Moses' smitten rock, gush out amain. 630 

Some weep to share the fame of the deceased, 
So high in merit, and to them so dear : 
They dwell on praises which they think they share ; 
And thus, without a blush, commend themselves. 
Some mourn in proof that something they could love : 535 
They weep not to relieve their grief, but show. 

517. The philosophy of tears : A scientific method of accounting for them ; 
of explaining their causes and effects. The author first treats of " funeral" 
tears, and assigns no less than nine several causes, or occasions, or motives. 
(1) A natural tenderness and sympathy with persons in distress (525-26) ; 
(2) . Some weep under the influence of the public eye who would not if left 
in private (527-30) ; (3) . A desire to share the fame of the deceased by 
thus seeming to manifest a near relation (531-34) ; (4) . Some weep not to 
relieve but to show grief, thus indicating that there is something they can 
love (535-36) ; (5). See 537-38; (6). 539-40; (7). 547-48; (8). 549-50; 
(9). 551-56. 

530. Smitten rock : Exod. 17 : 6. Psalm 105 : 41. 
10^ 



226 THE COMPLAINT. 

Some weep in perfect justice to the dead, 

As conscious all their love is in arrear. 

Some mischievously weep, not unapprised, 

Tears sometimes aid the conquest of an eye. 540 

With what address the soft Ephesians draw 

Then* sable net-work o'er entangled hearts ! 

As seen through crystal, how their roses glow, 

While hquid pearl runs trickling down their cheek ! 

Of hei^s not prouder Egypt's wanton queen, 545 

541. The persons here described are compared to artful and fascinating 
Ephesian females ; who were distinguished for the elegant refinement of 
their manners, and for the seductive arts that encourage and stimulate 
vicious indulgence. Ephesus, the capital of Ionia, in Asia Minor, is situated 
in a mild and enervating climate. It vv^as once a populous city, but has long 
since been reduced to a heap of ruins. 

545. Egypt's wanton queen : Cleopatra, remarkable for her beauty, her 
powers in music and conversation, her fascinating manners, and voluptuous 
intrigues with Caesar and Antony. The act of carousing gems, was the 
shameful extravagance imputed to her in one of the feasts which she gave 
to Antony, of dissolving in vinegar a pearl of priceless value and ^en drink- 
ing it. She did this to sustain her boast to Antony that, expensive and mag- 
nificent as her former entertainments had been, she could prepare one that 
should be worth a sum, which in our currency would equal two hundred 
and fifty thousand dollars. She made good her boast by drinking in the way 
mentioned, one of the richest pearls ever seen, and which she had used as an 
ear ornament. 

Some idea of her address, wantonness, pomp, and magnificence, may be 
formed by reading the account of her sail down the river Cydnus, and of her 
landing at Tarsus, w^here Antony had prepared to meet her, the object of his 
most passionate love. Dryden's account of the gorgeous display is scarcely 
an exaggeration, as to facts, of the scene as recorded by ancient historians, 
and will please every reader by the surpassing beauty of its versification. 
ShaJcspeare has also described the scene in his " Antony and Cleopatra ;" 
but not so finely as Dryden. 

" Her galley down the silver Cydnus row'd 
The tackling, silk, the streamers wav'd with gold, 
The gentle winds were lodg'd in purple sails : 
Her nymphs, like Nereids, round her couch were plac'd. 
Where she, another sea-born Venus lay — 
She lay, and leant her cheek upon her hand, 
And cast a look so languishingly sweet, 
As if, secure of all beholders' hearts, 



NIGHT V. 



227 



Carousing gems, herself dissolved in love. 
Some weep at death, abstracted from the dead, 
And celebrate, like Charles, their own decease. 
By kind construction some are deem'd to weep, 
Because a decent veil conceals then joy. 550 

Some weep in earnest, and yet weep in vain : 

Neglecting she could take 'em : boys, like Cupids, 

Stood fanning Avith their painted wings the winds 

That play'd about her face : but if she smil'd, 

A darting glory seem'd to blaze abroad ; 

That man's desiring eyes were never wearied, 

But hung upon the object : To soft flutes 

The silver oars kept time : and vrhile they play'd, 

The hearing gave new pleasure to the sight, 

And both to thought. 'Twas heaven, or somewhat more ; 

For she so chann'd all heai-ts, that gazing crowds 

Stood panting on the shore, and wanted breath 

To give theii- welcome voice." 

548. Like Charles, their oxon decease : Charles V. of Germany and Spain, 
one of the most powerful of monarchs, and of most extensive sway, aston- 
ished the world by abdicating his throne and retiring to the monastery of 
St. Justus, in Spain, where he passed the last two or three years of his life, 
in reading, in rural exercises, and religious devotions. About six months 
before his death his constitution was shattered by a violent attack of the 
gout and his mind became impaired with his body. He gave himself up to 
monastic severities, and even to self-flagellation, as an atonement for his 
crimes, according to the Roman Catholic faith which he embraced. Not 
satisfied with this he performed what he considered a more effectual act for 
securing the favour of heaven, and which Dr. Young, in the text, alludes to. 
He resolved to celebrate his own obsequies before his death. Says Dr. Ro- 
bertson, he ordered his tomb to be erected in the chapel of the monastery. 
His domestics marched thither in funeral procession, with black tapers in 
their hands. He himself followed in his shroud. He was laid in his coffin 
with much solemnity. The service for the dead was chanted, and Charles 
joined in the prayers which were offered up for the rest of his soul, mingling 
his tears with those which his attendants shed, as if they had been cele- 
brating a real funeral. The ceremony closed with sprinkling holy water on 
the coffin in the usual form, and all the assistants retiring, the doors of the 
chapel were shut. Then Charles rose out of the coffin, and withdrew to his 
apartment, full of those awful sentiments which such a singular solemnity 
was calculated to inspire. But either the fatiguing length of the ceremony 
or the impression which this image of death left upon his mind, affected him 
so much that next day he was seized with a fever, the violence of which his 
feeble frame could not long resist. 



228 THE COMPLAINT. 

As deep in indiscretion as in wo. 

Passion, blind passion, impotently pours 

Teai^ that deserve more teai-s, while Reason sleeps, 

Or gazes, like an idiot, nnconcern'd, 655 

Nor comprehends the meaning of the storm ; 

Kjiows not it speaks to her, and her alone. 

Irrationals all sorrow are beneath, 

That noble gift ! that pri^olege of man ! 

From sorrow's pang, the bh-th of endless joy. 5G0 

But these are baiTen of that bii'th divine : 

They weep impetuous as the simamer storm, 

And full as short ! the cruel grief soon tamed, 

They make a pastime of the stingless tale ; 

Far as the deep-resounding knell, they spread 565 

The di-eadful news, and hardly feel it more : 

No gain of "wisdom pays them for their wo. 

Half round the globe, the teai-s pump'd up by death 
Are spent in wat'ring vanities of life ; 

In making folly fiouiish still more fah, 5Y0 

When the sick soul, her wonted stay withdi'awn. 
Reclines on earth, and sorrows in the dust. 
Instead of learning there her true support, 
Tho' there thi-own down her true support to learn, 
Without Heav'n's aid, impatient to be blest, 575 

She crawls to the next shrub or bramble vile, 
Though from the stately cedar's arms she fell ; 
With stale forsworn embraces chngs anew, 

553. Impotently pours : Without self-control pours tears. 

.568. Tears pump'd up^ &c. : This figure is ingenious, but far-fetched ; yet 
as it strongly illustrates the idea intended to be conveyed, we are not pre- 
pared to condemn the use of it as some have done. 

571. The sick soul: It should be observed that the sick soul is beautifully 
described, from this to the 580th line, under the figure of a vine, that has 
been torn from a strong and lofty tree, the cedar, and then crawls to a con- 
temptible shrub or bramble. In lines 581-82, the figure becomes faulty, 
and displeasing to good taste. These lines should have been omitted. It is 
not the property of a vine to present a weed^ to appear at a ball, or to raffle^ 
that is, throw dice for a prize. 



NIGHT V. 229 

The stranger weds, and blossoms, as before, 

In all the fruitless fopperies of hfe ; 580 

Presents her weed, well fancied, at the ball. 

And raffles for the death's-head on the ring. 

FALSE AND TRUE GRIEF. 

So wept Aureha, till the destined youth 
Stept in with his receipt for making smiles, 
And blanching sables into bridal bloom. 585 

So wept Lorenzo fair Clarissa's fate, 
Who gave that angel boy on whom he doats ; 
And died to give him, orphan'd in his birth ! 
Not such, Narcissa, my distress for thee ; 
I'll make an altar of thy sacred tomb, 590 

To sacrifice to wisdom. What wast thou ? 
' Young, gay, and fortunate !' Each yields a theme : 

582. The prize in this case of raffling was a death's head on a ring. 
Shakspeare in his second part of Henry IV. introduces FalstafF as saying, 

" Peace, good Doll ! do not speak like a death's 
Head : do not bid me remember mine end." 

One of his annotators, Stevens, appends the following note which will 
equally well illustrate the line of our own author. 

It appears from the following passage in Marston's " Dutch Courtezan," 
1605, that it was the custom for the bawds of that age to wear a deathh 
head in a ring, very probably with the common motto, memento mori. Co- 
cledemoy, speaking of some of these, says ; " As for their death, how can it 
be bad, since their wickedness is always before their eyes, and a deathh 
head most commonly on their middle finger." 

Again, in Massinger's " Old Law," — " Sell some of my clothes to buy 
thee a deaths head, and put it on thy middle finger : your least considering 
bawds do so much." 

583. Aurelia : A fictitious name, representing one of a particular class of 
persons. 

585. Blanching sables, &c. : Whitening garments of mourning into those 
of bridal beauty and attractiveness . 

586. Clarissa : Probably the wife, or mistress, of the profligate Lorenzo. 

592. Yotmg, gay, and fortunate : Those attributes, respectively, are illus- 
trated at length in the following lines : the first, from 598 to 777 : the second 
from 778 to 901 : the third, from 902 to 1032. 



230 THE COMPLAINT. 

I'll dwell on each, to shun thought more severe ; 

(Heav'n knows I labour with severer still !) 

I'll dwell on each, and quite exhaust thy death. 595 

A soul without reflection, hke a pile 

Without inhabitant, to ruin runs. 

And, first, thy youth : what says it to grey hak's ? 
Narcissa, I'm become thy pupil now, — 

Early, bright, transient, chaste, as morning dew, 600 

She sparkled, was exhaled, and went to heav'n. 
Time on this head has snow'd, yet still 'tis borne 
Aloft, nor thinks but on another's grave. 
Cover'd with shame I speak it, age severe 
Old worn-out vice sets down for virtue fair ; 605 

With graceless gravity chastising youth, 
That youth chastis'd surpassing in a fault, 
Father of all, forgetfulness of death ! 
As if, hke objects pressing on the sight, 

Death had advanced too near us to be seen ; 610 

Or that hfe's loan time ripen'd into right, 
And men might plead prescription from the grave ; 
Deathless, from repetition of reprieve. 
Deathless ? far from it ! such are dead already ; 
Their hearts are bmied, and the world their gi-ave. 615 

DEATH IS PLACED AT A DISTANCE. 

^ Tell me, some god ! my guardian angel, tell 

What thus infatuates ? what enchantment plants 
The phantom of an age 'twixt us and death, 

600. As morning dew : The sparkling beauty of this comparison deserves 
notice and admiration. 

602. Snovo'd : Another figurative expression, representing the act of cov- 
ering the head with hair of snowy whiteness. 

612. Prescription : A right to the continued possession of life founded on 
past possession of it ; and thus a right to be exempted from death. 

616. Some god: An expression to be justified in a Christian poet only by 
supposing that he uses it in the sense of angel, of some celestial being supe- 
rior to man. 



NIGHT V. 231 

Already at the door I He knocks ; we hear, ' '' 

And yet we will not hear. What mail defends 620 

Our untouch'd hearts ? what miracle tui-ns off 

The pointed thought, which from a thousand quivers 

Is daily darted, and is daily shunn'd ? 

We stand, as in a battle, throngs on throngs 

Around us falling, wounded oft ourselves ; 625 

Though bleeding with our wounds, immortal still ! 

We see time's furrows on another's brow, 

And death, intrench'd, preparing his assault : 

How few themselves in that just mirror see ! 

Or, seeing, draw their inference as strong ! 630 

There death is certain ; doubtful here ; he must, 

And soon : we may, within an age, expire. 

Though grey our heads, our thoughts and aims are green ! 

Like damaged clocks, whose hand and bell dissent ; 

Folly sings six, while nature points at twelve. 635 

ABSURD LONGEVITY. 

Absurd longevity ! More, more, it cries : 
More hfe, more wealth, more trash of ev'ry kind. 
And wherefore mad for more, when relish fails ? 
Object and appetite must club for joy ; 

Shall folly labour hard to mend the bow, 640 

Baubles, I mean, that strike us from without, 
While nature is relaxing ev'ry string ? 
Ask thought for joy ; grow rich, and hoard within. 



630. ^s strong: As in the case of others. 

632. jlnd soon (expire) . 

633. Jlre green : A singular epithet to be applied to thoughts and aims, 
especially in contrast with the white hair of old age. It excites rather a 
ludicrous idea in the mind ; and the true idea does not readily occur. The 
author means to say that the thoughts and aims of the aged are such as be- 
come only those of an earlier period in life, being green and vigorous like the 
leaves in spring or summer. The next comparison of the aged to damaged 
clocks is ingenious and expressive. 

639. Clitbforjoy: unite in order to produce joy. 



232 THE COMPLAINT. 

TMnk you the soul, when this Hfe's rattles cease, 

Has nothing of more manly to succeed ? 645 

Contract the taste immortal : learn e'en now 

To rehsh what alone subsists hereafter. 

Divine, or none, henceforth, youi' joys for ever. 

Of age the glory is, to wish to die : 

That wish is praise and promise ; it applauds 650 

Past life, and promises our future bliss. 

What weakness see not childi-en in their sii-es ! 

Grand-chmacterical absurdities ! 

Grey-hair'd authority, to faults of youth 

How shocking ! it makes folly thrice a fool ; 655 

And our first childhood might our last despise. 

Peace and esteem is all that age can hope ; 

Nothing but wisdom gives the first ; the last 

Nothing but the repute of being wise. 

Folly bars both: our age is quite undone. 660 

What folly can be ranker ? Like our shadows, 
Om* wishes lengthen as our sun declines. 
No yfioh. should loiter, then, this side the grave. 
Our hearts should leave the world before the knell 
Calls for our carcases to mend the soil. 665 

Enough to live in tempest, die in port ; 
Age should fly concourse, cover in retreat 
Defects of judgment, and the will subdue ; 
Walk thoughtful on the silent solemn shore 
Of that vast ocean it must sail so soon, 670 

And put good works on board, and wait the wind 

646. Contract, &c. : Acquire a taste for immortal things. 

653. Grand-climacterical : Climacteric denotes a critical period in life when 
great changes occur : the grand climacteric is the sixty-third year. The 
absurdities of that period and those beyond it are here censured. 

661 . Like (mr shadows, &c. : The comparison is as beautiful as it is im- 
portant in its meaning. 

667. Retreat: Retirement. 

671. The direction />wif good works on board is too commercial and undigni- 
fied to comport with the lofty thoughts awakened by the other parts of this 
most beautiful passage. 



NIGHT V. 233 

That shortly blows us into worlds unknown : 
If unconsider'd, too, a dreadful scene ! 

THE THOUGHT OF DEATH USEFUL. 

All should be prophets to themselves ; foresee 
Theii* future fate ; their futui-e fate foretaste : 675 

This art would waste the bitterness of death. 
The thought of death alone the fear destroys : 
A disaffection to that precious thought 
Is more than midnight darkness on the soul, 
Which sleeps beneath it on a precipice, 680 

PufF'd off by the fii*st blast, and lost for ever. 

Dost ask, Lorenzo, why so warmly prest, 
By repetition hammer'd on thine ear. 
The thought of death ? That thought is the machine, 
The grand machine, that heaves us from the dust, 685 

And rears us into men I That thought ply'd home, 
"Will soon reduce the ghastly precipice 
O'erhanging hell, will soften the descent. 
And gently slope our passage to the grave. 
How warmly to be wish'd ! what heart of flesh 690 

Would trifle with tremendous ? dare extremes ? 
Yawn o'er the fate of infinite ? what hand, 
Beyond the blackest brand of censure bold, 
(To speak a language too well known to thee) 
Would at a moment give its all to chance, 695 

And stamp the die for an eternity ? 

Aid me, Karcissa ! aid me to keep pace 
With destiny, and ere her scissors cut 
My thread of life, to break this tougher thread 
Of moral death, that ties me to the world. 700 

Sting thou my slumb'ring reason to send forth 

688. Hell : Used here in the old English sense of grave. 

698. Scissors : An allusion to the classical fable of the Fates, or Destinies 
according to which the thread of life is cut by Atropos, one of the three sis- 
ters. The fable is explained in a note upon 381, Night I. 



234 THE COMPLAINT. 



A thought of observation on the foe ; 

To sally, and survey the rapid march 

Of his ten thousand messengers to man : 

Who, Jehu-hke, behind him turns them all. 705 

All accident apart, by nature sign'd, 

My warrant is gone out, though dormant yet ; 

Perhaps behind one moment lurks my fate. 

Must I then forward only look for death ? 
Backward I tui-n mine eye, and find him there. 710 

Man is a self-survivor ev'ry year. 
Man, like a stream, is in perpetual flow. 
Death's a destroyer of quotidian prey : 
My youth, my noontide, his ; my yesterday ; 
The bold invader shares the present hour. 715 

Each moment on the former shuts the gi'ave. 
While man is grooving, life is in decrease, 
And cradles rock us nearer to the tomb. 
Our birth is nothing but our death begun, 
As tapers waste that instant they take fire. 720 

Shall we then fear, lest that should come to pass. 
Which comes to pass each moment of our lives ? 
If fear we must, let that death turn us pale 
Which murders strength and ardour ; what remains 
Should rather call on death, than dread his call. 725 

Ye partners of my fault, and my decline ! 
Thoughtless of death, but when your neighbom-'s knell 
(Rude visitant) knocks hard at your dull sense, 
And with its thunder scarce obtains your ear ! 
Be death your theme in ev'ry place and hour ; 730 

Nor longer want, ye monumental sires. 



^ 



705. Jehu-like: Rapidly. An allusion to 2 Kings 9 : 20, ''and the driv- 
ing is like the driving of Jehu, the son of Nimshi ; for he driveth furiously." 

713. Quotidian: Daily. 

716-25. The course of thought in this passage is marked by great inge- 
nuity and power. 

731. Ye monumental sires : Ye aged sires who, as if already dead, serve as 
monumsnts, or tomb-stones. 



NIGHT V. 233 

A brother-tomb to tell you, yon stall die. 

That death you dread, (so great is natui-e's skill !) 

Know you shall couii before you shall enjoy. 

NEEDFUL AND NEEDLESS KNOWLEDGE. 

But you are learn'd ; in volumes deep you sit ; 735 

In wisdom shallow : Pompous ignorance ! 
Would you be still more learned than the learn'd ? 
Learn well to know how much need not be known, 
And what that knowledge which impaii's yom- sense. 
Our needful knowledge, like om- needful food, 740 

Unhedg'd, lies open in hfe's common field, 
And bids all welcome to the vital feast. 
You scorn what lies before you in the page 
Of natm'e and experience, moral truth ; 

Of indispensable, eternal fruit ; V45 

Fruit on which mortals, feeding, tm-n to gods ; 
And dive in science for distinguish'd names, 
Dishonest fomentation of yom* pride, 
Sinking in virtue as you rise in fame. 

Your learning, hkc the lunar beam, affords 750 

Light, but not heat ; it leaves you undevout, 
Frozen at heart, while speculation shines. 
Awake, ye curious indagators, fond 
Of knowing all, but what avails you known. 
If you would learn death's character, attend. 755 

All casts of conduct, all degrees of health. 
All dies of fortune, and all dates of age, 

735-36. Notice the admirable contrast here introduced, 
738. Need: Needs. 

753. Indagators : Investigators. 

754. Known : Being known. 
756. Casts: Kinds. 

757- Dies of fortune: Grades of fortune, represented as depending on the 
throw of a die, or as lying beyond human control. 



236 THE COMPLAINT. 

Together shook in his impartial urn, 

Come forth at random ; or, if choice is made, 

The choice is quite sarcastic, and insults '760 

AU bold conjectm*e and fond hopes of man. 

What countless multitudes not only leave. 

But deeply disappoint us, by their deaths ! 

Though gTeat om* sorrow, greater our surprise. 

Like other tyi-ants death delights to smite, 765 

"What, smitten, most proclaims the pride of pow'r, 
And arbitrary nod. His joy supreme. 
To bid the wretch survive the fortunate ; 
And feeble wrap th' athletic in his shroud ; 
And weeping fathers build their children's tomb: 770 

Me thine, Narcissa ! — What though short thy date ? 
Virtue, not rolling suns, the mind matures. 
That life is long which answers life's great end. 
The time that bears no fruit deserves no name. 
The man of wisdom is the man of years. 775 

In hoary youth Methusalems may die ; 
O how misdated on their flatt'ring tombs ! 



Narcissa's youth has lectm-ed me thus far : 
And can her gaiety give counsel too ? 
That hke the Jews' famed oracle of gems, 780 

758, Urn : It was usual for the Greeks and Latins to burn the dead and 
preserve their ashes in a vase of a roundish form : it was their practice also 
to collect the votes of their popular assemblies, usually expressed by white 
or black pebbles, in an urn. Our author seems to make an allusion to both 
of these practices. 

776. An allusion to the oldest man that ever lived : Gen. 5 : 27, "and all 
the days of Methusaleh were nine hundred sixty and nine years, and he 
died." The contrasted ideas in this line are exceedingly striking; a Me- 
thusaleh dying in hoa7-y youth : a man of great age, vrho, judged by the 
standard in (775), dies in his youth, having accomplished either for himself 
or others no more than should have been done during the first few years of 
life. 

780. Jews'' famed oracle of gems : Reference seems here to be made to a part 



NIGHT V. 237 

Sparkles instruction ; such as throws new hght, 

And opens more the character of death, 

HI known to thee, Lorenzo ! This thy vaunt : 

' Give death his due, the wretched and the old ; 

E'en let him sweep his rubbish to the grave ; ' Y85 

Let him not violate kind nature's laws, 

But own man born to hve as well as die.' 

Wretched and old thou giv'st him : young and gay 

He takes ; and plunder is a tpant's joy. 

What if I prove, 'The farthest from the fear 790 

Are often nearest to the stroke of fate V 

All, more than common, menaces an end. 
A blaze betokens bre^dty of hfe : 
As if bright embers should emit a flame, 
Glad spirits sparkled from IN'arcissa's eye, 795 

And made youth younger, and taught life to hve. 
As nature's opposites wage endless war, 
For this offence, as treason to the deep 
Inviolable stupor of his reign. 

Where lust, and turbulent ambition, sleep, 800 

Death took swift vengeance. As he hfe detests, 
More life is still more odious ; and reduced 
By conquest, aggrandizes more his pow'r. 
But wherefore aggi-andized ? By Heaven's decree, 
To plant the soul on her eternal guard, 805 

Jewish High Priest's dress — ^the breast plate, in which were inserted four 
rows of precious stones, upon each of which was engraven the name of one 
of the sons of Jacob. These stones received the names of Urim and Thum- 
mim, (Light and Truth) because by them, as instruments, God gave revela- 
tionSj and declared certain truths. The precise mode in which this was 
done is not now well understood. The opinions on the subject may be seen 
in Kitto's Cyclopaedia. 

784. His due : What properly belongs to him, namely, the wretched and 
the old. 

791. Fate: Used for death. 

796. Taught life to live : Taught life to be vigorous ; or authorized life to 
continue without abatement of vigour. 



238 THE COMPLAINT. 

In awful expectation of our end. 

Thus runs death's dread commission ; ' Strike, but so, 

As most alarms the living by the dead.' 

Hence stratagem dehghts him, and surprise, 

And cruel sport with man's securities. 810 

Not simple conquest, triumph is his aim ; 

And, where least feared, there conquest triumphs most. 

This proves my bold assertion not too bold. 

THE FORMS THAT DEATH ASSUMES. 

What are his aiis to lay our fears asleep ? 
Tiberian arts his purposes wi*ap up 815 

In deep dissimulation's darkest night. 
Like princes unconfess'd in foreign courts. 
Who travel under cover, death assumes 
The name and look of life, and dwells among us ; 
He takes all shapes that serve his black designs : 820 

Though master of a wider empii-e far 
Than that o'er which the Roman eagle flew. 

815. Tiberian arts : Arts such as Tiberius (the successor of Augustus) 
used, one of the most odious, cunning, and cruel of dissemblers ; possessed 
of a dark, distrustful, suspicious, reserved, and most artful mind ; hesitating 
at no deception or cruelty that placed within his power the objects of his 
aversion, dread, or jealousy : and universally execrated for his bestial sensu- 
alities during the latter years of his infamous reign. He is said to have had 
a confused, ambiguous, and hesitating method of expressing, or rather of 
hinting his sentiments, and these he often designed to be understood in a 
contrary sense from that which they naturally bore. 

" Such," says Tacitus, " was the genius of Tiberius : by nature subtile? 
dark, designing, and always mysterious, he had exercised his talents in the 
school of politics, and became, by constant practice, the great master of craft 
and dissimulation. What he could do by an act of power, he chose rather to 
accomplish by the crooked means of deceit and stratagem. And even when 
he was drawing near his end, and everything was failing, his dissimulation 
remained. Dissembling to the last, he hoped by false appearances to hide 
the decay of nature." 

822. Eagle : Standard, upon which the form of the eagle was depicted. 



NIGHT V. 239 

Like Nero, he's a fiddler, charioteer ; 

Or drives his phaeton in female guise ; 

Quite unsuspected, till, the wheel beneath, 825 

His disarray'd oblation he devoui'S. 

He most affects the forms least like himself, 
His slender self: hence burly corpulence 
Is his famihar wear, and sleek disguise. 

Behind the rosy bloom he loves to lurk, 830 

Or ambush in a smile ; or, wanton, dive 
In dimples deep : Love's eddies, which di-aw in 
Unwary hearts, and sink them in despair. 
Such on Narcissa's couch he loiter'd long 
Unknown, and when detected, still was seen 835 

To smile ; such peace has innocence in death ! 

Most happy they ! whom least his arts deceive. 
One eye on death, and one full fix'd on heav'n, 
Becomes a mortal and immortal man. 

Long on his wiles a piqued and jealous spy, 840 

I've seen, or dream'd I saw, the tyrsait dress, 
Lay by his horrors, and put on his smiles. 
Say, muse, for thou remember'st, call it back, 
And show Lorenzo the surprising scene ; 
If 'twas a dream, his genius can explain. 845 

823-4. Like Nero, &c. : Another infamous Roman emperor. " To the con- 
tempt of his subjects/' says Ferguson, " he at last joined a contempt of that 
very dignity to which he himself was raised as sovereign of so great an em- 
pire. Having a talent for music, he became, or believed himself to be, a 
distinguished performer, exhibited his skill in the public theatres, and tra- 
velled through Greece in the character of an artist, to receive the applauses 
of a people supposed to excel in discernment and taste. Next to the fears 
which assailed him on the prospect of death, he was most affected, it is said, 
"with surprise, that the world could submit to lose the hand of so great a per- 
former." Chariot-driving was one of his favorite amusements. He also 
performed on the stage as a tragedian, comedian, and buffoon. Our author 
intimates that he drove his phaeton, or open carriage, in female guise, or appa- 
rel. The term phaeton, in this application, is drawn from the classical fable 
of Phaeton, the son of Phoebus, driving one day the chariot of the sun, an 
attempt in which he met with wretched success. 



240 THE COMPLAINT. 

'Twas in a circle of the gay I stood ; 
Death would have enter'd ; Natui-e push'd him back ; 
Supported by a doctor of renown, 
His point he gain'd ; then artfully dismiss'd 
The sage ; for Death design'd to be conceal'd. 850 

He gave an old vivacious usurer 
His meagre aspect, and his naked bones ; 
In gi-atitude for plumping up his prey, 
A pamper'd spendthrift ; whose fantastic air, 
Well-fashion'd figure, and cockaded brow, 855 

He took in change, and underneath the pride 
Of costly linen tuck'd his filthy shi'oud. 
His crooked bow he straighten'd to a cane, 
And hid his deadly shafts in Myra's eye. 

THE PECULIAR HAUNTS OF DEATH. 

The dreadful masquerader, thus equipp'd, 860 

Out sallies on adventm-es. Ask you where ? 
Where is he not ? For his peculiar haunts 
Let this sufl&ce ; sure as night follows day. 
Death treads in Pleasure's footsteps round the world. 
When Pleasure treads the paths which Reason shuns. 865 
When against Reason, Riot shuts the door. 
And Gaiety supplies the place of Sense, 
Then foremost, at the banquet and the ball, 
Death leads the dance, or stamps the deadly die ; 
Nor ever fails the midnight bowl to crown. 870 

Gaily carousing to his gay compeers. 
Inly he laughs to see them laugh at him, 
As absent far ; and when the revel burns. 
When Fear is banish'd, and triumphant Thought, 
Calling for all the joys beneath the moon, 875 

Against him turns the key, and bids him sup 

859. My rah eye : This fictitious name is invented merely to designate one 
of the gay party before alluded to. 
876. Against him : That is, Death. 



' NIGHT V. 241 

With their progenitors — he drops his mask ; 

Frowns out at full ; they start, despair-, expii-e. 

Scarce with more sudden terror and surprise 

From his black mask of nitre, touch'd by fire, 880 

He bm-sts, expands, roars, blazes, and devom-s. 

And is n^t this triumphant treachery, 

And more than simple conquest in the fiend ? 

death's uncertainty as to time. 

And now, Lorenzo, dost thou wrap thy soul 
In soft security, because unknown 885 

Which moment is commission'd to destroy ? 
In death's uncertainty thy danger hes. 
Is death uncertain ? therefore thou be fix'd, 
Fix'd as a sentinel, all eye, all ear. 

All expectation of the coming foe. 890 

Rouse, stand in arms, nor lean against thy spear, 
Lest slumber steal one moment o'er thy soul. 
And Fate surprise thee nodding. Watch, be strong : 
Thus give each day the merit and renown 
Of dying well, though doom'd but once to die. 895 

Nor let fife's period, hidden (as from most) 
Hide, too, from thee the precious use of life. 

FORTUNE, A BRIGHT MARK EOR DEATH. 

Eai'ly, not sudden, was Narcissa's fate : 
Soon, not surprising, Death his visit paid : 
Her thought went forth to meet him on his way, 900 

Nor Gaiety forgot it was to die. 
Though Fortune, too, (our third and final theme) 
As an accomplice, play'd her gaudy plumes. 
And ev'ry ghtt'ring gewgaw, on her sight. 
To dazzle and debauch it from its mark. 905 

877. Their progenitors : Their ancestors, as being more advanced in life 
and more fit subjects for death, in their estimation. 
11 



242 THE COMPLAINT. 

Death's dreadful advent is the mark of man, 

knd every thouglit that misses it is bhnd. 

Fortune with Youth and Gaiety conspired 

To weave a triple wreath of happiness 

(If happiness on earth) to crown her brow. 910 

And could Death charge thro' such a shining shield ? 

That shining shield invites the tyrant's spear, 

As if to damp our elevated aims, 

And strongly preach humanity to man. 

O how portentous is prosperity ! 915 

How, comet-like, it threatens while it shines ! 

Few years but yield us proofs of Death's ambition. 

To cull his victims from the fairest fold, 

And sheathe his shafts in all the pride of hfe. 

"When flooded with abundance, purpled o'er 920 

With recent honoui-s, bloom'd with ev'ry bhss, 

Set up in ostentation, made the gaze, 

The gaudy centre, of the pubhc eye ; 

When Fortune thus has toss'd her child in air, 

Snatch'd from the covert of an humble state, 925 

How often have I seen him dropt at once, 

Our morning's envy, and our evening's sigh ! 

As if her bounties were the signal given, 

The flow'ry wreath, to mark the sacrifice, 

And call death's arrows on the destined prey. 930 

HAPPINESS, IN CONTENTMENT *, NOT IN FORTUNE. 

High fortune seems in cruel league with fate. 
Ask you for what ? To give his war on man 

906. The mark of man : That which man should maik or observe. 

916. Comet-like, it threatens : These shining and erratic bodies were long 
considered as preternatural indications of approaching calamities: but 
science has dissipated this illusion. The author, however, speaks in con- 
formity with the then quite uniform popular opinion. 

927. Our morning^ s envy, &c, : A beautiful and concise way of expressing 
this idea ; the object of our morning's envy, he. 



NIGHT V. 243 

The deeper dread, and more illustrious spoil ; 

Thus to keep daring mortals more in awe. 

And burns Lorenzo still for the sublime 935 

Of hfe ? to hang his airy nest on high, 

On the slight timber of the topmost bough, 

Rock'd at each breeze, and menacing a fall ? 

Granting grim Death at equal distance there ; 

Yet peace begins just where ambition ends. 940 

What makes man wretched ? happiness denied ? 

Lorenzo ! no, 'tis happiness disdain'd. 

She comes too meanly dress'd to win our smile, 

And calls herself Content, a homely name ; 

Our flame is transport, and content our scorn. 945 

Ambition turns, and shuts the door against her, 

And weds a toil, a tempest, in her stead ; 

A tempest to warm transport near of kin. 

Unknowing what our mortal state admits, 

Life's modest joys we ruin while we raise, 950 

And all our ecstacies are wounds to peace ; 

Peace, the full portion of mankind below. 

And since thy peace is dear, ambitious youth ! 
Of fortune fond ! as thoughtless of thy fate ! 
As late I drew Death's picture, to stir up 955 

Thy wholesome fears, now, drawn in contrast, see 
Gay Fortune's, thy vain hopes to reprimand. 
See, high in air the sportive goddess hangs, 
Unlocks her casket, spreads her glitt'ring ware, 
And calls the giddy winds to puff abroad 960 

Her random bounties o'er the gaping throng. 
All rush rapacious ; friends o'er trodden friends, 
Sons o'er their fathers, subjects o'er their kings, 
Priests o'er their gods, and lovers o'er the fair, 
(Still more adored) to snatch the golden show'r. 965 

935-36. The sublime of life : the high station of life. 

945. Our flame is transport : We are not satisfied with moderate ardour in 
our feelings : we crave high excitement, and hence we scorn simple content- 
ment as a source of happiness. 



244 THE COMPLAINT. 



THE BASE IDOLATRY OF FORTUNE, 

Gold glitters most where virtue shines no more ; 
As stars from absent suns have leave to shine. 
O what a precious pack of votaries, 
Unkennell'd from the prisons and the stews, 
Pour in, all op'ning in their idol's praise ! 970 

All, ardent, eye each wafture of her hand, 
And, wide-expanding their voracious jaws, 
Morsel on morsel swallow down unchew'd, 
Untasted, through mad appetite for more ; 
Gorged to the throat, yet lean and rav'nous still : 9*75 

Sagacious all to trace the smallest game. 
And bold to seize the greatest. If (blest chance !) 
Court-zephyrs sweetly breathe, they launch, they fly 
O'er just, o'er sacred, all-forbidden ground. 
Drunk with the burning scent of place or pow'r, 980 

Staunch to the foot of lucre till they die. 

Or if for men you take them, as I mark 
Their naanners, thou their various fates survey. 
With aim mismeasured, and impetuous speed. 
Some, darting, strike their ardent wish far ofl^ 985 

Through fury to possess it : some succeed. 
But stumble and let fall the taken prize. 
From some, by sudden blasts, 'tis whirl'd away. 
And lodged in bosoms that ne'er dream'd of gain. 
To some it sticks so close, that, when torn oft", 990 

Torn is the man, and mortal is the wound. 
Some, o'er-enamour'd of their bags, run mad. 
Groan under gold, yet weep for want of bread. 

969. UnkenndVd: Let loose Hke a pack of dogs. 
978. Court-zephyrs : The pleasant breezes of court favour. 
982. For men : For men^ not dogs. 

992. O' er-enamour'' d : Too devoted to bags of gold ; so much so as to re- 
fuse to employ it in the purchase of needful food. 



NIGHT V. 245 

Together some (unhappy rivals !) seize, 

And rend abundance into poverty; 995 

Loud croaks the raven of the law, and smiles ; 

Smiles too the goddess ; but smiles most at those 

(Just victims of exorbitant desire !) 

Who perish at their own request, and whelm'd 

Beneath her load of lavish grants, expire. 1000 

Fortune is famous for her numbers slain : 

The number small which happiness can bear. 

Though various for a while their fates, at last 

One curse involves them all ; at death's approach 

All read their riches backward into loss, 1005 

And mourn in just proportion to their store. 

And death's approach (if orthodox my song) 
Is hasten'd by the lure of fortune's smiles. 
And art thou still a glutton of bright gold ? 
And art thou still rapacious of thy ruin? 1010 

Death loves a shining mark, a signal blow ; 
A blow which, while it executes, alarms. 
And startle thousands with a single fall. 
As when some stately gi'owth of oak, or pine. 
Which nods aloft, and proudly spreads her shade, 1015 

The sun's defiance, and the flock's defence. 
By the strong strokes of lab'ring hinds subdued, 
Loud groans her last, and, rushing from her height, 
In cumbrous ruin thunders to the ground ; 
The conscious forest trembles at the shock, 1020 

994. The meaning is ; — some persons together seize a large property in a 
.litigious way, contend for it in the court room, and rend it into fragments, 
reduce it to insignificance. 

996. Raven : This bird among the ancients was regarded as one of ill- 
omen. 

997. The goddess : Fortuiae is here intended. 

1002. Happiness can bear : Can bear, or endure without injury, the intox- 
icating influence of excessive prosperity. 

1014-21. A splendid comparison is here introduced. 
1017, Hinds: Rustics. 



246 THE COMPLAINT. 

And liill, and stream, and distant dale resound. 

These high-aim'd darts of death, and these alone, 
Should I collect, my quiver would be full ; 
A quiver which, suspended in mid air, 

Or near heav'n's archer, in the zodiac, hung, 1025 

(So could it be) should draw the public eye, 
The gaze and contemplation of mankind ! 
A constellation awful, yet benign, 
To guide the gay through life's tempestuous wave, 
Nor suffer them to strike the common rock ; 1030 

* From gi'eater danger to grow more secure, 
And, wi-apt in happiness, forget their fate.' 

LYSANDER AND ASPASIA. THE DISAPPOINTED NUPTIALS. 

Lysander, happy past the common lot, 
"Was warn'd of danger, but too gay to fear. 
He wooed the fair Aspasia ; she was kind : 1035 

In youth, form, fortune, fame, they both were bless'd. 
All who knew envied, yet in envy loved. 
Can fancy form more finish'd happiness ? 
Fix'd was the nuptial hom\ Her stately dome 
Rose on the sounding beach. The ghtt'ring spnes 1040 

Float in the wave, and break against the shore : 
So break those ghtt'ring shadows, human joys. 
The faithless morning smiled : he takes his leave, 
To re-embrace, in ecstacies, at eve. 

The rising stonn forbids. The news arrives ; 1045 

Untold she saw it in her servant's eye. 
She felt it seen (her heart was apt to feel ;) 
And, drown'd, without the furious ocean's aid. 
In suffocating sorrows, shares his tomb. 

Now round the sumptuous bridal monument 1050 

The guilty billows innocently roar, 

1025. Archer : The constellation Sagittarius. 

1040, Glittering spires : That is, the shadows of them. 



NIGHT V. 247 

And the rough sailor, passing, drops a tear. 

A tear ! can tears suffice ? — but not for me. 

How vain oui' efforts ! and our arts how vain ! 

The distant train of thought I took, to shun, 1055 

Has thrown me on my fate. — These died together ; 

Happy in ruin ! undivorced by death ! 

Or ne'er to meet, or ne'er to part, is peace. — 

Narcissa, Pity bleeds at thought of thee ; 

Yet thou wast only near me, not myself. 1060 

Survive myself ? — that cures all other wo. 

Narcissa hves ; Philander is forgot. 

O the soft commerce ! O the tender ties. 

Close twisted with the fibres of the heart ! 

Which broken, break them, and drain off the soul 1065 

Of human joy, and make it pain to hve. — 

And is it then to live ? when such friends part, 

'Tis the survivor dies. — My heart ! no more. 

1058. Or ne'er to meet : Either ne'er. &c. 

1063. Commerce: Interchange of affectionate regards. 

1068. The survivor dies : In the loss of a very dear friend, he suffers more 
pain than the deceased friend did in dying. No more : Utter no more, or, I 
can say no more : the subject is too painful. 



PREFACE. 

TO 

THE INFIDEL EECLAIMED. 



Few ages have been deeper in dispute about religion than this. The dis- 
pute about religion, and the practice of it, seldom go together. The shorter 
therefore, the dispute, the better. I thJnk it may be reduced to this single 
question. Is man immortal, or is he not ? If he is not, all our disputes are 
mere amusements, or trials of skill. In this case, truth, reason, religion, 
which give our discourses such pomp and solemnity, are (as will be shown) 
mere empty sounds, without any meaning in them. But if man is immor- 
tal, it will behoove him to be very serious about eternal consequences ; or, 
in other words, to be truly religious. And this great fundamental truth, un- 
established, or unawakened in the minds of men, is, I conceive, the real 
source and support of all our infidelity; how remote soever the particular 
objections advanced may seem to be from it. 

Sensible appearances affect most men much more than abstract reasonings : 
and we daily see bodies drop around us, but the soul is invisible. The power 
which inclination has over the judgment, is greater than can well be con- 
ceived by those who have not had an experience of it ; and of what num. 
bers is it the sad interest, that souls should not survive ! The heathen 
world confessed, that they rather hoped than firmly believed immortality ! 
and how many heathens have we still amongst us ! The sacred page as- 
sures us, that life and immortality are brought to light by the gospel ; but 



260 PREFACE. 

"by how many is the gospel rejected or overlooked ! From these considera- 
tions, and from my being accidentally privy to the sentiments of some par- 
ticular persons, I have been long persuaded that most, if not all, our infidels 
(whatever name they take, and whatever scheme, for argument's sake, and 
to keep themselves in countenance, they patronise) are supported in their 
deplorable error by some doubt of their immortality, at the bottom. And I 
am satisfied that men once thoroughly convinced of their immortality, are 
not far from being Christians. For it is hard to conceive, that a man fully 
conscious eternal pain or happiness will certainly be his lot, should not ear- 
nestly, and impartially, inquire after the surest means of escaping the one 
and securing the other. And of such an earnest and impartial inquiry, I 
well know the consequence. 

Here, therefore, in proof of this most fundamental truth, some plain 
arguments are offered ; arguments derived from principles which infidels 
admit in common with believers ; arguments which appear to me altogether 
irresistible : and such as, I am satisfied, will have great weight with all who 
give themselves the small trouble of looking seriously into their own bosoms 
and of observing, with any tolerable degree of attention, what daily passes 
round about them in the world. If some arguments shall here occur which 
others have declined, they are submitted, with all deference to better judg- 
ments in this, of all points the most important. For, as to the being of a 
GOD, that is no longer disputed ; but it is undisputed for this reason only> 
viz. because, where the least pretence to reason is admitted, it must forever 
be indisputable. And, of consequence, no man can be betrayed into a dis- 
pute of that nature by vanity, which has a principal share in animating our 
modem combatants against other articles of our belief 



NIGHT VI 



THE INFIDEL RECLAIMED. 

IN TWO PARTS. 

CONTAINING THE NATURE, PROOF, AND IMPORTANCE OF IMMORTALITY. 



PART I. 

\ViraRE, AMONG OTHEB THINGS, GLOEY AlsT) EICKES AHE PAETIOTJLAELT CONSIDEEED. 



%mM tn tliB %t Inn, Imij f Bllmnr, 



She (for I know not yet her name in heav'n) 
Not early, like Narcissa, left the scene, 
Nor sudden, hke Philander. What avail ? 
This seeming mitigation but inflames : 

This fancied med'cine heightens the disease. 5 

The longer known, the closer still she grew ; 
And gi-adual parting is a gradual death. 
'Tis the grim tyrant's engine which extorts, 
By tardy pressure's still-increasing weight, 

1. She : Rather an abrupt commencement, as there is no intimation who 
is here intended. It is some one who was introduced in the previous 
Night. 



252 THE COMPLAINT. 

From hardest hearts confession of distress. " 10 

O the long dark approach, through years of pain, 
Death's gall'ry ! (might I dare to call it so) 
"With dismal doubt and sable terror hung, 
Sick Hope's pale lamp its only ghmm'ring ray : 
There, Fate my melancholy walk ordain'd, 15 

Forbid Self-love itself to flatter, there. 
How oft I gazed prophetically sad ! 
How oft I saw her dead, while yet in smiles ! 
In smiles she sunk her grief to lessen mine : 
She spoke me comfort, and increased my pain. 20 

Like powerful armies, trenching at a town, 
By slow and silent, but resistless sap, 
In his pale progress gently gaining ground, 
Death m-ged his deadly siege ; in spite of art, 
Of all the balmy blessings ISTature lends 25 

To succour frail humanity. Ye Stars ! 
(Not now first made famihar to my sight) 
And thou, Moon ! bear witness ; many a night 
He tore the pillow from beneath my head. 
Tied down my sore attention to the shock 30 

By ceaseless depredations on a hfe 
Dearer than that he left me. Dreadful post 
Of observ^ation ! darker ev'ry hour ! 
Less dread the day that drove me to the brink. 
And pointed at eternity below, 35 

When my soul shudder'd at futurity ; 
When, on a moment's point th' important die 
Of life and death spun doubtful, ere it fell, 

15. Fate : The divine purpose. 

17. Prophetically sad: Sad from foreseeing her certain and approaching 
death. 

21. The figure here introduced is highly appropriate and well- carried 
through. 

22. Sap : A trench constructed for the purpose of undermining a wall so 
as to effect an entrance. 

34. Less dread : Less dreadful. 



NIGHT VI. 253 

And turn'd up life, my title to more wo. 

But why more wo ? More comfort let it be. 40 

Nothing is dead but that which Avish'd to die ; 
Nothing is dead but wretchedness and pain ; 
Nothing is dead but what encumber'd, gall'd, 
Block'd up the pass, and barr'd from real hfe. 
Where dwells that wish most ardent of the wise ? 4& 

Too dark the smi to see it ; highest stai-s 
Too low to reach it ; Death, gi-cat Death alone^ 
O'er stars and sun triumphant, lands us there. 

Nor dreadful our transition, though the mind, 
An artist at creating self-alarms, 60 

Rich in expedients for inquietude. 
Is prone to paint it dreadful. Who can take 
Death's portrait true ? the tpant never sat. 
Om- sketch all random strokes, conjecture all ; 
Close shuts the gi*ave, nor tells one single tale. 55 

Death and his image rising in the brain. 
Bear faint resemblance ; never are alike ; 
Fear shakes the pencil ; Fancy loves excess ; 
Dark Ignorance is lavish of her shades ; 
And these the formidable picture draw. 60 

But gi-ant the worst ; 'tis past ; new prospects rise, 
And di'op a veil eternal o'er her tomb. 
Faa- other views our contemplation claim. 
Views that o'erpay the rigours of our life ; 

45. TJiat wish : The object of that wish. 

46. Too dark the sun, &c. : The sun is here personified, and from its in- 
strumentality in enabhng percipient beings to discover objects, is figuratively 
represented as itself having the power of perception, but still it has not the 
luminoQsness sufficiently abundant or penetrating to enable it to discover the 
object referred to, the future abode of the good : nor are the highest sto/rs 
high enough to be on a level with it, but death shall carry us on the ethe- 
real ocean beyond sun and stars, and land us there. 

56. The image which the mind pictures of death, is but a faint representa- 
tion of it, owing to the unfavourable influence of fear, fancy, and ignor- 
ance (58, 59). 



254 THE COMPLAINT. 

Views that suspend our agonies in death. 65 

Wrapt in the thought of immortahty, 

Wrapt in the single, the triumphant thought ! 

Long hfe might lapse, age unperceived come on, 

And find the soul unsated with her theme. 

Its natm'e, proof, importance, fii'e my song. 10 

that my song could emulate my soul ! 

Like her, immortal. No ! — the soul disdains 

A mark so mean ; far nobler hope inflames ; 

K endless ages can outweigh an hour. 

Let not the laurel, but the palm, insphe. 75 

THE NATURE OF IMMORTALITY. 

Thy natm-e, Lnmortahty ! who knows ? 
And yet who knows it not ? It is but life 
In stronger thread of brighter colour spun, 

75. Let not the laurel, but the palm, inspire : It seems difficult to assign a 
reason for this distinction, the branches or leaves of both these trees having 
been alike appropriated as emblems of honour and of superiority. The 
author probably regards the former as an emblem and reward only of an 
earthly and temporary sort — the badge of an earthly immortality awarded 
to his song : but the palm he employs as an emblem of the Christian's 
triumph over all the evils of the present life and of his imperishable honour 
and glory in heaven : alluding probably to a passage in the seventh chapter 
of the Revelation — " After this I beheld, and lo, a great multitude which no 
man could number, of all nations, and kindreds, and people, and tongues, 
stood before the throne, and before the Lamb, clothed with white robes, and 
palms in their hands." Such an immortality as they enjoyed: such a palm 
branch as they waved in joyful triumph before heaven's high throne, he 
prized above the laurel crowm, the reward of genius on earth — such a re- 
ward as tradition reports to have been conferred on Virgil and Horace. It 
was the custom in the middle ages, at some of the European universities, to 
bestow a laurel crown upon such as took degrees in grammar and rhetoric, of 
which poetry was one department. See Night VII. 982. 

77-80. But life, &c. : The com.parison is ingenious and highly illustrative. 
The Stygian dye spoken of is an allusion to a fable connected with the river 
Styx, in Arcadia, in Greece. Ceres, in her flight from Neptune, having been 
compelled to change herself into a mare, came to this stream, and beholding 
in it her sadly altered form, was seized with hatred of the stream, and made 
its waters black. 



NIGHT VI. 255 

And spun for ever ; dipt by cruel Fate 

In Stygian dye, how black, bow brittle here ! 80 

How short our correspondence with the sun ! 

And while it lasts inglorious ! Our best deeds, 

How wanting in their weight ! Our highest joys, 

Small cordials to support us in our pain, 

And give us strength to suffer. But how gi*eat 85 

To mingle int'rests, converse, amities. 

With all the sons of reason, scatter'd wide 

Through habitable space, wherever born, 

Howe'er endow'd ! To hve free citizens 

Of universal natui*e ! to lay hold, 90 

By more than feeble faith, on the Supreme ! 

To call heav'n's rich unfathomable mines 

(Mines which support archangels in their state) 

Our own ! to rise in science as in bhss, 

Liitiate in the secrets of the skies ! 95 

To read creation ; read its mighty plan 

In the bare bosom of the Deity I 

The plan and execution to collate ! 

To see, before each glance of piercing thought. 

All cloud, all shadow, blown remote, and leave 100 

No mystery — ^but that of love divine. 

Which hfts us on the seraph's flaming wing. 

From earth's Aceldama, this field of blood, 

Of inward anguish, and of outward ill. 

From darkness and from dust, to such a scene ! 105 

Love's element ! true joy's illustrious home ! 

83, Wanting in their weight : An allusion to what was said of the king of 
Babylon, Thou art weighed in the balances and art found wanting — Dan. v. 27. 

85. How great : How dignified and noble. 

95. Initiate : Initiated, instructed. 

98. Collate: Compare. 

103. Aceldama: The field purchased, as a place of burial for strangers, 
with the money for which Judas had betrayed Christ, and which remorse- 
fully he had flung back to those who had paid it— Matt. 27 : 8. Acts 1 : 19. 

106. Loveh element : The region in which love thrives and luxuriates. 



256 THE COilPLAINT. 

From earth's sad contrast (now deplored) more fair ! 
What exquisite vicissitude of fate ! 
Bless'd absolution of our blackest hour ! 

Lorenzo, these are thoughts that make man man, 110 

The wise illumine, aggTandize the great. 
How gi-eat, (while yet we tread the kindi*ed clod. 
And ev'ry moment fear to sink beneath 
The clod we tread, soon trodden by om* sons) 
How great, in the wild whirl of time's pursuits, 115 

To stop, and pause ; involved in high presage 
Through the long vista of a thousand yeare, 
To stand contemplating om* distant selves. 
As in a magnifying mirror seen. 

Enlarged, ennobled, elevate, divine ! 120 

To prophesy our own futurities ! 
To gaze in thought on what all thought transcends ! 
To talk, with fellow candidates, of joys 
As far beyond conception as desert, 
Om^elves th' astonish'd talkei*s and the tale ! 125 

AN HONEST PKIDE. 

Lorenzo, swells thy bosom at the thought ? 
The swell becomes thee : 'tis an honest pride. 
Revere thyself, — and yet thyself despise. 
His nature no man can o'er-rate, and none 
Can under-rate his merit. Take good heed, 130 

Nor there be modest where thou should'st be proud : 
That almost universal error shun. 
How just our jDride, when we behold those heights ! 

109. Absolution of, &c. : Absolution, or deliverance, conferred by death. 
112. How great: How dignified and important. 
120. Elevate: Elevated. 
125. The tale : The subjects of the tale. 

27. An honest pride : The source of an honourable and just self-esteem. 
131. The idea is, nor of that think meanly, of which thou shouldst think 
highly ; namely, thine own nature. 



NIGHT VI. 257 

Not those ambition paints in air, but tbose 

Reason points out, and ardent virtue gains, 135 

And angels emulate. Our pride how just ! 

"When mount we ? when these shackles cast ? when quit 

This cell of the creation ? this small nest, 

Stuck in a corner of the universe, 

Wrapt up in fleecy cloud and fine-spun air ? 140 

Fiue-spun to sense, but gross and feculent 

To souls celestial ; souls ordained to breathe 

Ambrosial gales, and drink a pm-er sky : 

Greatly triumphant on Time's farther shore, 

Where virtue reigns, em-ich'd with full arrears, 145 

While Pomp imperial begs an alms of Peace. 

In empire high, or in proud science deep, 
Ye born of earth, on what can you confer, 
With half the dignity, with half the gain, 
The gust, the glow of rational delight, 150 

As on this theme, which angels praise and share ! 
Man's fate and favours are a theme in heav'n. 

THE SCENES AND OCCUPATIONS OF IMMORTALITY. 

What wi'etched repetition cloys us here ! 
What periodic potions for the sick ! 

Distemper'd bodies ! and distemper'd minds ! 155 

Li an eternity what scenes shall strike ! 
Adventures thicken ! novelties sm-prise ! 
What webs of wonder shall unravel there ! 
What full day pour on all the paths of heav'n. 
And hght th' Almighty footsteps in the deep ! 160 

134. Those: Those (which). 

143. Ambrosial : Fragrant and refreshing. 

145. Full arrears : In the triumphs of the future state the virtuous shall 
enjoy a full compensation for all the evils of the present. There, too, the 
pomp imperial of the present shall be abjectly poor, and ask aid of the Peace 
of the virtuous above. There seems to be an allusion to the parable of the 
rich man and Lazarus — Luke 16 : 23 — 25. 



258 THE COMPLAINT. 

How shall the blessed day of our discharge 
Unwind, at once, the labyrinths of Fate, 
And straighten its inextricable maze ! 

If inextinguishable thirst in man 
To know ; how rich, how full, oui' banquet there! 165 

There, not the moral world alone unfolds ; 
The world material, lately seen in shades, 
And in those shades by fragments only seen. 
And seen those fragments by the lab'ring eye, 
Unbroken, then, illustrious and entii-e, 1*70 

Its ample sphere, its universal frame. 
In full dimensions, swells to the sm-vey ; 
And enters, at one glance, the ravish'd sight. 
From some superior point (where, who can tell ? 
Suffice it, 'tis a point where gods reside) 1*75 

How shall the stranger man's illumined eye, 
In the vast ocean of unbounded space, 
Behold an infinite of floating worlds 
Divide the crystal waves of ether pure. 

In endless voyage, without port ! The least 180 

Of these disseminated orbs how great ! 
Great as they are, what numbers these surpass, 
Huge as leviathan to that small race, 
Those twinkhng multitudes of httle fife. 

He swallows unperceived! Stupendous these ! 185 

Yet what are these stupendous to the whole ? 
As particles, as atoms ill perceived ; 
As circulating globules in our veins ; 
So vast the plan. Fecundity divine ! 

162. JLabyrinths, &c. : See note on Night IX. 1131. 

166. Unfolds (itself). 

170. Unbroken, then, &c. : a magnificent description here follows of the 
magnitude and extent of the imiverse. 

175. Gods : Our author is fond of using this term to denote men in their 
higher state of being. 

178. Infinite: Infinite number. 



NIGHT VI. 259 

Exub'raut source ! perhaps I wi'oiig thee still. 190 

If admiration is a source of joy, 
What transport hence ! yet this the least in heav'n. 
What this to that illustrious robe He wears, 
Wlio toss'd this mass of wonders from his hand 
A specimen, an earnest of his pow'r ! 195 

'Tis to that glory, whence all glory flows. 
As the mead's meanest flow'ret to the sun 
Which gave it birth. But what, this Sun of heav'n ? 
This bhss supreme of the supremely blest ? 
Death, only death, the question can resolve. 200 

By death cheap bought th' ideas of our joy ; 
The bare ideas ! solid happiness 
So distant from its shadow chased below. 

THE CHASE OF A SHADOW WORLDLY GOOD. 

And chase we still the phantom through the fire, 
O'er bog, and brake, and precipice, till death ? 205 

And toil we still for sublunary pay ? 
Defy the dangers of the field and flood, 
Or, spider-hke, spin out our precious all, 
Our more than vitals spin (if no regard 

To great futurity) in curious webs 210 

Of subtle thought and exquisite design, 
(Fine network of the brain !) to catch a fly ! 
The momentary buzz of vain renown ! 
A name ! a mortal immortality ! 

Or (meaner still) instead of grasping air, 215 

For sordid lucre plunge we in the mire ? 
Drudge, sweat, through ev'ry shame, for ev'ry gain, 
For vile contaminating trash ; throw up 

190. / wrong thee still: That is, by an inadequate view of Thy works. 

193. What this^ &c. : The wonders of redemption are pronounced superior 
to those of creation, already surveyed. 

201. Cheap bought: The thought is, that it would be worth the pangs of 
death to purchase thereby even the ideas of our future joy as Christians. 



260 THE COMPLAINT. 

Oui* hope in heav'n, oiir dignity with man, 

And deify the du*t matm-ed to gold ? 220 

Ambition, Av'rice, the two demons these 

Which goad thi-ough ev'iy slough onr human herd, 

Hai'd travell'd from the cradle to the grave. 

How low fhe wi-etches stoop ! how steep they chmb ! 

These demons bm-n mankind, but most possess 225 

Lorenzo's bosom, and turn out the skies. 

Is it in time to hide eternity ? 
And why not in an atom on the shore 
To cover ocean ? or a mote, the sun ? 

Glory and wealth ! have they this blinding pow'r ? 230 

What if to them I prove Lorenzo blind ? 
Would it surprise thee ? Be thou then surprised ; 
Thou neither know'st : then natm-e learn from me. 

TRUE AMBITION. 

Mark well, as foreign as these subjects seem, 
What close connection ties them to my theme. 235 

First, what is true ambition ? The pm-suit 
Of glory nothing less than man can share. 
Were they as vain as gaudy-minded man. 
As flatulent with fumes of self-applause. 

Their arts and conquests animals might boast, 240 

And claim their laurel crowns as well as we. 
But not celestial. Here we stand alone ; 
As in om* form, distinct, pre-eminent. 
If prone in thought, om- stature is our shame ; 
And man should blush, his forehead meets the skies. 245 

The visible and present are for brutes, 
A slender portion ! and a narrow bound ! 
These, Reason, with an energy di\dne, 

227. In time : In the power of time. 

244- If prone in thought : If our thoughts take a downward direction. 
245. Should blush^ &c. : Should blush that his forehead looks upward, 
rather than downward with the brutes. 



NIGHT VI. 261 

Overleaps, and claims tlie fature and unseen ; 

The vast unseen ! the future fathomless ! 250 

When the great soul buoys up to this high point, 

Leaving gross Nature's sediments below, 

Then, and then only Adam's offspring quits 

The sage and hero of the fields and woods, 

Asserts his rank, and rises into man. 255 

This is ambition ; this is human fire. 

NEITHER TALENTS NOR STATION CONSTITUTE GREATNESS. 

Can parts, or place, (two bold pretenders !) make 
Lorenzo great, and pluck him from the thi'ong ? 

Genius and art, ambition's boasted wings, 
Our boast but ill deserve. A feeble aid ! 260 

Dedalian engin'ry ! If these alone 
Assist our flight, fame's flight is glory's fall. 
Heart-merit wanting, mount we ne'er so high, 
Om* height is but the gibbet of our name. 
A celebrated wretch when I behold, 265 

When I behold a genius bright, and base, 
Of tow'ring talents, and terrestrial aims ; 
Methinks I see, as thrown from her high sphere. 
The glorious fragments of a soul immortal. 
With rubbish mix'd, and glitt'ring in the dust. 270 

Struck at the splendid melancholy sight. 

At once compassion soft, and envy, rise 

But wherefore envy ? Talents angel- bright, 
If wanting worth, are shining instruments 

257. Parts, or place : Talents or high station. 

261. Dedalian engirt'ry : The wings manufactured by Daedalus, alluding 
to a classical fable explained in a former note. They were of feathers 
united by wax ; by the aid of these wings he crossed a part of the Mediter- 
ranean sea, but his son, Icarus, venturing to fly too near the sun, the wax 
melted and he fell into the sea and was lost. The next line alludes to this 
part of the story. 

264. Gibbet of our name : A gallo^vs on which our name, or character, is 
disgraced. 



262 THE COMPLAINTD. 

In false ambition's hand, to finish faults 275 

Illustrious, and give infamy renown. 

Great ill is an achievement of gi-eat powers : 
Plain sense but rarely leads us far astray. 
Reason the means, affections choose our end ; 
Means have no merit, if om- end amiss. 280 

If wrong oui' hearts, our heads are right in vain : 
What is a Pelham's head to Pelham's heart ? 
Hearts are proprietors of all applause. 
Right ends and means make wisdom : worldly wise 
Is but half-witted, at its highest praise. 285 

Let genius then despair to make thee gTeat ; 
Nor flatter station. What is station high ? 
'Tis a proud mendicant ; it boasts and begs ; 
It begs an alms of homage from the throng, 
And oft the throng denies its charity. 290 

Monarchs, and ministers, are a-\vful names ; 
Whoever wear them, challenge om* devoir. 
Rehgion, pubhc order, both exact 
External homage, and a supple knee, 

To beings pompously set up, to serve 295 

The meanest slave ; all more is merit's due. 
Her sacred and inviolable right ; 
Nor ever paid the monarch, but the man. 
Our hearts ne'er bow but to superior worth ; 
Nor ever fail of their allegiance there. 300 

Fools, indeed, drop the man in their account, 
And vote the mantle into majesty. 
Let the small savage boast his silver fur ; 

279. Reason (chooses) the means, 

282. Pelham: Prime minister of Great Britain, to whom this Night is 
dedicated. 

291. Awful names : Awe-inspiring names. 

292. Devoir : Service and profound respect. 

296. All more : All more than a merely external homage is due to merit, 
and not to official dignity. 

303. Silver fur: Fur adorned with silver. 



NIGHT VI. 263 

His royal robe unborrow'd, and imboiiglit, 

His own, descending fairly from his sires. 305 

Shall man be proud to wear his hveiy, 

And souls in ermine scorn a soul without ? 

Can place or lessen us or aggi-andize ? 

Pigmies are pigmies still, though perch'd on Alps ; 

And pji'aniids ai-e pyi-amids in vales. 310 

Each man makes his own stature, builds himself : 

Virtue alone outbuilds the ppamids ; 

Her monuments shall last, when Egypt's fall. 

Of these sure truths dost thou demand the cause ? 
The cause is lodged in immortality. 315 

Hear, and assent. Thy bosom bm-ns for power ; 

306. His livery : The dress distinguishing the servants of such a king. 

307. Ermine: Costly fur. 

308. Place or : Place either. 

309. Pigmies: Persons of diminutive size. The PJgmaean nation (whence 
this word), according to an ancient fable, w^ere composed of beings of only 
a few inches in stature, celebrated for the war waged by them in Egypt 
upon cranes. 

312. Outbuilds the pyramids : Builds a more enduring monument than the 
pyramids. These were monuments of massive masonry, which, from a 
square base, rise by regular gradations till they terminate in a point, but so 
that the width of the base always exceeds the perpendicular height. The 
pyramids commence immediately south of Cairo, but on the opposite bank 
of the Nile, and extend in an uninterrupted range for many miles in a 
southerly direction parallel with the banks of the river. One of these occu- 
pies an area of more than thirteen acres. Its perpendicular height is 480 
feet, being 43 feet higher than St. Peter's at Rome, and 136 feet higher 
than St. Paul's in London. Herodotus says that 100,000 men were occu- 
pied twenty years in the construction of this enormous edifice. It consists 
of successive tiers of vast blocks of calcareous stone, rising above each 
other in the form of steps, the thickness of the stones, and of course the 
height of the steps, decreasing as the altitude of the pyramid increases : thus 
varying from il to 1| feet in height. 

It is not clearly known for what purpose, or by whom the pyramids 
were built : but the most probable opinion is, that they were intimately con- 
nected with the religion of the ancient Egyptians . and that they were at 
once a species of tombs and temples, but chiefly of the latter character. — 
Brande. 



264 THE COMPLAINT. 

What station charms thee ? I'll install thee there ; 

'Tis thine. And art thou gi-eater than before ? 

Then thou before wast something less than man. 

Has thy new post betray'd thee into pride ? 320 

That treach'rons pride betrays thy dignity ; 

That pride defames humanity, and calls 

The being mean, which staffs or strings can raise. 

That pride, like hooded hawks, in darkness soars, 

From blindness bold, and tow'ring to the skies. 325 

'Tis born of ignorance, which knows not man : 

An angel's second ; nor his second long. 

A Nero quitting his imperial throne, 

320. Betray^: Misled. 

321. Betrays : Is unfaithful to thy true dignity; does violence to it. 
322- Humanity : Human nature. 

324. Hooded hawks : An allusion is here made to the amusement of 
falconry, which prevailed over Europe in the middle ages. It was a 
favourite sport with princes and nobles, especially in France. It had this 
advantage of hunting, that ladies could engage in it, who were delighted to 
carry the falcon (or hawk) on their wrists. The knight had the charge of 
flying the bird at the right moment, of following her, of encouraging by 
calls, taking the prey from her, caressing her, and placing her gracefully on 
the wrist of her mistress. All kinds of birds and even gazelles are pursued 
by trained hawks, that fasten themselves upon the heads of these creatures 
and peck at their eyes, which checks them till the hounds can come up. 
Wolves were formerly hunted in the same way in Europe. The falcons 
intended for this sport, were taken young from the nest, and fed for months 
with the raw flesh of pigeons and wild birds before they were inured to sit- 
ting on the hand, to which they were accustomed by resting on posts, &c. 
They were afterwards made tame by being deprived, for a long time, of 
sleep, and inured to endure a leathern hood, or covering. At first they were 
tied with a string about thirty fathoms in length, to prevent them from flying 
away, from which they were not released till they were completely disci- 
plined, so as to return at the proper signal. When taken into the field they 
were always capped, or hooded, so as to see no object but their game, and as 
soon as the dogs stopped, or sprung it, the falcon was unhooded and tossed 
into the air after her prey. — Encyc. Americ. 

327. An angeVs second, &c. : Man is now second only to the angels ; nor 
shall he long continue thus inferior, but shall equal or perhaps surpass the 
angel. 



NIGHT VI. 265 

And courting glory from the tinkling string, 

But faintly shadows an immortal soul, 330 

With empire's self, to pride, or rapture fired. 

If nobler motives minister no cure, 

E'en vanity forbids thee to be vain. 

High worth is elevated place ; 'tis more ; 
It makes the post stand candidate for thee : 335 

329. String : Nero counted it more glory to play well upon a fiddle or 
guitar than to perform the appropriate duties of an emperor, or occupy his 
throne. 

331. Fired, to pride or rapture by the possession even of empire itself. 

333. E^ en vanity forbids thee to be vain: Dr. Thomas Brown has presented 
some discriminating observations upon pride and vanity, worthy of being 
here introduced. 

When I define pride to be that emotion which attends the contemplation 
of our excellence, I must be understood as limiting the phrase to the si7igle 
emotion that immediately follows the contemplation. The feeling of our 
excellence may give rise directly or indirectly to various other afiections of 
the mind. It may lead us to impress others as much as possible with our 
superiority : which we may do in two ways — by presenting to them at 
every moment some proofs of our advantages, mental, bodily, or in the gifts 
of fortune : or by bringing to their mind directly their inferiority by the 
scorn with which we treat them. The former of these modes of conduct, in 
which we studiously bring forward any real or supposed advantages which 
we possess, is what is commonly termed vanity ; the Jatter, in which we 
wish to make more directly felt the real or supposed comparative meanness 
of these, is what is commonly termed haughtiness : but both, though they 
may arise from our mere comparison of ourselves and others and our conse- 
quent feeling of superiority, are the results of pride, not the pride itself. 
We may have the internal emotion, which is all that is truly pride, together 
with too much sense to seek the gratification of our vanity by any childish 
display of excellencies substantial or frivolous : since, hovi^ever desirous we 
may be that these advantages should be known, we may have the certainty that 
they could not be made known by ourselves without the risk of our appearing 
ridiculous. In like manner we may be internally very full of our own im- 
portance, and yet too desirous of the good opinion even of our inferiors to 
treat them with the scorn which we feel ; or, to make a more pleasing sup- 
position, too humanely considerate of their uneasiness, to shock them by 
forcing on them the painful feeling of their inferiority, however gratifying 
our felt superiority may be to ourselves. — Philosophy of Mind, vol. ii. 464-5. 

333. Makes the post, &c. : High worth does not need to seek a post of dis- 
tinction, but is sought to occupy it. 
12 



266 THE COMPLAINT. 

Makes more than monarclis, makes an honest man ; 

Though no exchequer it commands, 'tis wealth ; 

And though it wears no riband, 'tis renown ; 

Renown, that would not quit thee, tho' disgraced, 

Kor leave thee pendent on a master's smile. 340 

Other ambition nature interdicts ; 

Nature proclaims it most absurd in man, 

By pointing at his origin, and end : 

Milk, and a swathe, at fii'st his whole demand ; 

His whole domain, at last, a turf or stone ; 345 

To whom, between, a world may seem too sm^JI. 

Souls, truly gi-eat, dart forward on the wing 
Of just ambition, to the grand result. 
The curtain's fall. There, see the buskin'd chief 
Unshod behind this momentary scene ; 350 

Reduced to his own stature, low or high 
As vice, or virtue, sinks him, or sublimes ; 
And laugh at this fantastic mummery. 
This antic prelude of gTotesque events. 

Where dwarfs are often stilted, and betray 355 

A Httleness of soul by worlds o'er-run. 
And nations laid in blood. Dread sacrifice 

337. Exchequer : Treasury ; deriving the name, as is supposed, fronn the 
checkered cloth that originally covered the table used by the court, whose 
business it was to decide upon law cases connected with the royal revenue 
of Great Britain. 

338. Riband : That is, as a badge of honour. 
340. Pendent : Dependent. 

346. Between (the time of the former and the latter). 

349. The curtain's fall : There is an allusion here to the idea that the 
world may be regarded as a theatrical stage on which all men are acting 
their respective parts ; at the close the curtain falls. By the buskin'd chief 
is meant a man who has held a superior station in society. 

352. Sublimes: Raises. 

354. ^ntic : Odd, ridiculous. 

354. By ivorlds o'er-run, &c. : A just estimate is here pronounced of the 
Alexanders and Napoleons of the earth, falsely called great. They were 
intellectually and physically great, but morally small. 



NIGHT VI. 26^ 

To Christian pride ! which had with horror shock'd 
The darkest Pagans, offer'd to their gods. 

O thou most Christian enemy to peace ! 3C0 

Again in arms ? again provoking fate ? 
That prince, and that alone, is truly great, 
Who draws the sword reluctant, gladly sheathes ; 
On empire builds what empire far outweighs, 
And makes his throne a scaffold to the skies. 365 

Why this so rare ? Because forgot of all 
The day of death ; that venerable day, 
Which sits as judge ; that day which shall pronounce 
On all our days, absolve them, or condemn. 
Lorenzo, never shut thy thought against it ; 370 

Be levees ne'er so full, afford it room, 
And give it audience in the cabinet. 
That friend consulted (flatteries apart) 
Will tell thee fair, if thou art great or mean 

To doat on aught may leave us, or be left, 375 

Is that ambition ? Then let flames descend, 
Point to the centre their inverted spires. 
And learn humihation from a soul 
Which boasts her hneage from celestial fire. 
Yet these are they the world pronounces wise ; 380 

The world, which cancels nature's right and wrong, 
And casts new wdsdom : e'en the grave man lends 

358. Christian pride : Pride of those belonging to what are called Chris- 
tian countries. Properly speaking, there is no such trait as Christian pride- 
Pride is an ti- Christian. 

360. Most Christian^ &c. : A satirical reference to some monarch of a 
Christian country. About this lime most of the nations of Europe were 
waging war, Great Britain included. Perhaps the author meant it to be 
applicable to George TI. yet as a matter of policy so expresses the sentiment 
that it may be applied to any other of the belligerent monarchs. Austria, 
Russia, and Great Britain were united in opposition to France, Prussia, Ba- 
varia, and Sweden. 

371. Levees: Concourse of visitors on set days. 

377. Centre (of the earth). 



268 THE COMPLAINT. 

His solemn face to countenance the coin. 

Wisdom for parts is madness for the whole. 

This stamps the paradox, and gives ns leave 385 

To call the wisest weak, the richest poor, 

The most ambitious, unambitious, mean ; 

In triumph mean, and abject on a throne. 

Nothing can make it less than mad in man, 

To put forth all his ardour, all his art, 390 

And give his soul her full unbounded flight, 

But reaching Him, who gave her wings to fly. 

When blind ambition quite mistakes her road, 

And downward pores, for that which shines above. 

Substantial happiness, and true renown ; 395 

Then, hke an idiot gazing on the brook, 

We leap at stars, and fasten in the mud ; 

At glory gi'asp, and &mk in infamy. 

Ambition ! pow'rful source of good and ill ! 
Thy strength in man, like length of wing in bhds, 400 

When disengaged from earth, with greater ease 
And swifter flight transports us to the skies ; 
By toys entangled, or in guilt bemired, 
It turns a curse : it is om* chain and scourge 
In this dark dungeon, where confined we he, 405 

Close grated by the sordid bars of sense ; 
All prospect of eternity shut out 
And, but for execution, ne'er set free. 

TRUE WEALTH IN OUR CORPOREAL SENSES. 

With error in ambition justly charged, 
Find we Lorenzo wiser in his wealth ? 410 

What if thy rental I reform, and draw 
An inventory hew to set thee right ? 

384. For parts^ &c. : That is, for certain parts only. 

396. Like an idiot, &c. : A very striking and illustrative comparison, pre- 
senting also a strong antithesis, or contrast. 
"" 411. Rental: Account of rents. 



NIGHT VI. Jiby 

Wliere thy true treasui-e ? Gold says, * ISTot in me ;' 

And ' Not in me,' the diamond. Gold is poor ; 

India's insolvent: seek it iig. thyself, 415 

Seek in thy naked self, and find it there ; 

In being so descended, form'd, endow'd ; 

Sky-bom, sky-guided, sky-returning race ! 

Erect, immortal, rational, divine ! 

In senses, which inherit earth and heav'ns ; 420 

Enjoy the various riches nature yields ; 

Far nobler, give the riches they enjoy ; 

Give taste to fruits, and harmony to groves ; 

Their radiant beams to gold, and gold's bright sire ; 

Take in, at once, the landscape of the world 425 

At a small inlet, which a grain might close, 

And half create the wondrous world they see. 

415. Seek it : Seek true treasure. 

420. In senses^ &c. : Find thy true treasure (413) in the senses, which in- 
herit, &c., enjoy, &c., give, &c., take in, &c., and half create, &c. It would be 
difficult to find a more admirable account of the wealth which we enjoy in 
our five senses : none can read it properly without gratitude to the benefi- 
cent Creator. In vain were all the objects around us provided if these won- 
derful senses had not been conferred upon ourselves. Those objects are not 
the cause, but simply the occasion of our enjoyments (431). Our senses 
give taste to fruits, and harmony to groves, &c. : that is, fruits would afford us 
no relish ; the songsters of the groves would yield no pleasures to us, if we 
had not the sense of taste, and the sense of hearing. And how astonishing 
is the fact announced so beautifully in (425-7) ? That rays of light from a 
landscape of several miles in diameter should be so admitted through the 
pupil of the eye, with a diameter of about an eighth of an inch only, that the 
landscape, in all its manifold tints of beauty or of grandeur, shall be clearly 
and most delightfully depicted on the back part of the interior of the eye, 
and perceived by the mind. 

425-7. The wonders of vision, and the vi^isdom of Deity displayed in the 
arrangements for this purpose, are admirably portrayed by Dr. Thomas 
Dick in his Christian Philosopher : we cannot refrain from transcribing some 
of his remarks. 

The myriads of rays of light which flow from the minutest points of the 
surrounding scene, before they can produce the sensation of vision and form 
a picture of the landscape upon the retina, must be compressed into a space 
little more than one eighth of an inch in diameter before they can enter the 



210 THE COMPLAINT. 

Our senses, as our reason, are divine. 

But for the magic organ's pow'rful charm, 

Earth were a rude uncolour'd chaos still. 430 

Objects are but th' occasion ; ours th' exploit : 

Ours is the cloth, the pencil, and the paint. 

Which nature's admirable picture draws, 

And beautifies creation's ample dome. 

Like Milton's Eve, when gazing on the lake, 435 

Man makes the matchless image, man admires : 

Say then, shall man, his thoughts all sent abroad, 

pupil of the eye ; yet they all pass through this small aperture without the 
least compression, and paint the images of their respective objects in exactly 
the same order in which these objects are arranged. Again : could a painter, 
after a long series of ingenious efforts, delineate the extensive landscape be- 
fore me on a piece of paper not exceeding the size of a silver sixpence 
(dime) so that every object might be as distinctly seen, in its proper shape 
and colour, as it now appears when I survey the scene around me in nature, 
he would be incomparably superior to all the masters of his art that ever 
went before him. This effect, which far transcends the utmost efforts of 
human genius, is accomplished in a moment by the hand of nature, or, in 
other words by " the finger of God." All the objects I am now surveying, 
comprehending an extent of a thousand square miles, are accurately delineated 
in the bottom of my eye on a space less than half an inch in diameter. 
How delicate then must be the strokes of that pencil which has formed such 
a picture ! 

428. Divine : Not only of divine origin, but of amazing power and exqui- 
site susceptibilities. 

429. Magic organ : The organ of vision. 

432. Ours is the cloth, &c. : We furnish the necessary materials for the 
picture which Nature draws : that is, without the apparatus of the eye and 
sense of vision in us, all creation, to us, would be a blank. 

435. Like Miltonh Eve, &c. : Paradise Lost, Bk. IV. 456—471. 

" I thither went 
With unexperienced thouglit, and laid me down 
On the green banlc, to look into the clear 
Smooth lake, that to me seem'd another sky. 
As I bent down to look, just opposite 
A shape within the wat'ry gleam appear'd, 
Bending to look on mc. I started back ; 
It started back : but pleased I soon returned ; 
Pleased it return'd as soon with answ'ring looks 
Of sympathy and love :" &cc. 



NIGHT VI. \ 271 

(Superior wonders in himself forgot) 

His admiration waste on objects round, 

When Heav'n makes him the soul of all he sees ? 440 

Absurd ! not rare ! so great, so mean, is man. 

TRUE WEALTH, IN THE INTELLECTUAL AND MORAL POWERS. 

What wealth in senses such as these ! What wealth 
In fancy, fired to form a fairer scene 
Than sense sm'veys ! In memory's firm record, 
Which, should it perish, could this world recall 445 

From the dark shadows of o'erwhelming years ! 
In colours fresh, originally bright, 
Preserve its portrait, and report its fate ! 
What wealth in intellect, that sov'reign pow'r ; 
Which sense and fancy summons to the bar ; 450 

Interrogates, approves, or reprehends ; 
And from the mass those underlings import, 
From their materials sifted and refined. 
And in truth's balance accurately weigh'd. 
Forms art and science, government and law; 455 

The sohd basis, and the beauteous frame, 
The vitals and the grace of civil fife ! 
And manners (sad exception !) set aside, 
Strikes out, with master-hand, a copy fair 
Of His idea, whose indulgent thought, 460 

Long, long, ere chaos teem'd, plann'd human bliss. 

What wealth in souls that soar, dive, range around, 

440. The soul : That which gives value to all he sees : that which alone 
enables us to apprehend the existence, and appreciate the beauties of the 
external world. 

441. How absurd then, yet how common for man to send his thoughts 
perpetually abroad, and to overlook the wonders in his own physical con- 
stitution. 

445. Should if perish : Should the world perish. 

447. Originally bright : Bright as at first. 

452- Those trnderlings : The bodily senses, and fancy. 

458. Set aside : (being) set aside. 



272 THE COMPLAINT. 

Disdaining limit or fii-om place or time ; 

And hear at once, in thought extensive, hear 

Th' almighty fiat, and the trumpet's sound ! 465 

Bold, on creation's outside walk, and view 

What was, and is, and more than e'er shall be ; 

Commanding, with omnipotence of thought, 

Creations new in fancy's field to rise ! 

Souls, that can grasp whate'er th' Almighty made, 4Y0 

And wander wild through thing-s impossible ! 

What wealth, in faculties of endless growth, 

In quenchless passions violent to crave. 

In hberty to choose, in pow'r to reach. 

And in duration, (how thy riches rise !) 475 

Duration to perpetuate — boundless bhss ! 

Ask you, what pow'r resides in feeble man 
That bhss to gain ? Is \^rtue's, then, unknown ? 
Virtue, om- present peace, our future prize. 
Man's unprecarious natural estate, 480 

Improveable at will, in virtue lies ; 
Its tenure sure : its income is divine. 

HIGH-BUILT ABUNDANCE : OF WHAT USE ? 

High-built abundance, heap on heap ! for what ? 
To breed new v/ants and beggar us the more ; 
Then, make a richer scramble for the throng. ^ 485 

Soon as this feeble pulse, which leaps so long 
Almost by miracle, is tired with play, 
Like rubbish from disploding engines thrown, 

463. Or from -place : Either from, &c. 

465. The voice of God as he created the world, speaking it into being ; 
and the archangel's trump, at the close of this world's history, summoning to 
judgment and retribution all that have dwelt upon it. 

466. That walk boldly on creation's outside — its farthest limits, &c. The 
powers of the mind (from 442 to 476) are described not only with great 
poetic beauty, but with equal philosophical exactness and fullness 

483. For what ? For what purpose is such abundance piled up ? 

488. Disploding engines, &c. : Bursting shells, filled with rubbish. No 



NIGHT VI. 273 

Our magazines of hoarded trifles fly ; 

Fly divei-se ; fly to foreigners, to foes ; 490 

New masters court, and call the former fools, 

(How justly !) for dependence on their stay. 

Wide scatter, fii-st, our playthings ; then, om* dust. 

Dost com't abundance for the sake of peace ? 
Learn, and lament thy self-defeated scheme : 495 

Riches enable to be richer still ; 
And, richer still, what mortal can resist ? 
Thus wealth (a cruel task-master !) enjoins 
!N'ew toils, succeeding toils, an endless train ! 
And murders peace, which taught it fii-st to shine. 500 

The poor are half as wretched as the rich, 
Whose proud and painful jDrivilege it is. 
At once, to bear a double load of wo : 
To feel th'C stings of envy and of want, 
Outrageous want ! both Indies cannot cure. 505 

A competence is vital to content. 
Much wealth is corpulence, if not disease ; 
Sick, or encumber'd, is our happiness. 
A competence is all we can enjoy. 

O be content, where heav'n can give no more ' 510 

More, like a flash of water from a lock. 
Quickens our spirit's movement for an hour ; 
But soon its force is spent, nor rise our joys 
Above our native temper's common stream. 
Hence disappointment lurks in ev'ry prize, 515 

As bees in flow'rs, and stings us with success. 

The rich man who denies it proudly feigns, 
Nor knows the wise are privy to the he. 
Much learning shows how httle mortals know ; 
Much wealth, how little worldhngs can enjoy : 520 

comparison could be more fit or impressive, to represent the scattering of 
hoarded wealth among avaricious survivors. 

504. Want: Mental want — desire. 

rj]l. More (than a competence). 
12* 



274 THE COMPLAINT. 

At best, it babies us with endless toys, 

And keeps ns children till we drop to dust. 

As monkeys at a mirror stand amazed, 

They fail to find what they so plainly see ; 

Thus men, in shining riches, see the face 525 

Of happiness, nor know it is a shade. 

But gaze, and touch, and peep, and peep again, 

And wish, and wonder it is absent still. 

How few can rescue opulence from want ! 
Who lives to nature rarely can be poor ; 530 

Who hves to fancy never can be rich. 
Poor is the man in debt ; the man of gold, 
In debt to fortune, trembles al her pow'r : 
The man of reason smiles at her and death. 
O what a patrimony this ! A being 535 

Of such inherent strength and majesty, 
Not worlds possess'd can raise it ; worlds destroy'd 
Can't injure ; which holds on its glorious course, 
When thine, Nature ! ends ; too blest to mourn 
Creation's obsequies. What treasure this ! 540 

The monarch is a beggar to the man. 

529. Want: See (504). ^ 

530-1. To natu?-e, &c. : To fancy: Agreeably to, &c. 

535-41. O what a patrimony this 7 kc. " There is but one object," says 
Augustine, " greater than the soul, and that one is its creator." '• Nihil est 
potentius ilia creatura quae mens dicitur rationalis, nihil est sublimius. 
Quicquid supra illam est jam Creator est." When we consider the powers 
of his mind, even without reference to the wonders which he has produced 
on earth, what room does man afford for astonishment and admiration ! His 
senses, his memory, his reason, the past, the present, the future, the whole 
universe, and, if the universe have any limits, even more than the whole 
universe comprised in a single thought ; and, amid all these changes of feel- 
ings that succeed each other in rapid and endless variety, a permanent and 
unchangeable duration compared with which the duration of external things 
is but the existence of a moment. — Brown's Phil, of Mind^ vol. i. 62. 

541. Beggar to the man : Is poor compared with the man. The advan- 
tages of royalty are contemptible when compared with the simple endow- 
ments of humanity. The strength and majesty (536) inherent in man as 



NIGHT VI. 275 



IMMORTALITY DEFINED AND ILLUSTRATED. 

Immortal ! Ages past, yet notMng gone ! 
Morn without eve ! a race without a goal ! 
Unshorten'd by progression infinite ! 

Futm-ity for ever future ! Life 54t> 

Beginning still, where computation ends ! 
'Tis the description of a deity ! 
'Tis the description of the meanest slave ! 
The meanest slave dares then Lorenzo scorn ? 
The meanest slave thy sov'reign glory shares. 550 

Proud youth ! fastidious of the lower world ! 
Man's la^vful pride includes humility ; 
Stoops to the lowest ; is too great to find 
Inferiors ; all immortal ! brothers all ! 
Proprietors eternal of thy love. 555 

Immortal ! What can strike the sense so strong, 
As this the soul ? It thunders to the thought ; 
Reason amazes ; gratitude o'erwhelms ; 
No more we slumber on the brink of fate ; 
Roused at the sound, th' exulting soul ascends, 560 

And breathes her native air ; an air that feeds 
Ambitions high, and fans ethereal fii*es ; 
Quick kindles all that is divine ^vithin us, 
Nor leaves one loit'ring thought beneath the stars. 

Has not Lorenzo's bosom caught the flame ? 565 

Immortal ! Were but one immortal, how 

557. As this the soul. he. : As this idea of immortality strikes the soul. 
To the thinking mind it seems to have a voice of thunder. The entire pa- 
ragraph and the one that follows, receive illustration from what an able 
writer has said : — " No doctrine is more common among Christians than that 
of man's immortality ; but it is not so generally understood, that the germs 
or principles of his whole future being are now wrapped up in his soul, as 
the rudiments of the future plant in the seed. As a necessary result of this 
constitution, the soul, possessed and moved by these mighty though infant 
energies, is perpetually stretching beyond what is present and visible, strug- 
gling against the bounds of its earthly prison house, and seeking relief and 
joy in imaginings of unseen and ideal being." 



276 THE COMPLAINT. 

Would others envy ! how would thrones adore ! 

Because 'tis common, is the blessing lost ? 

How this ties up the bounteous hand of Heav'n ! 

O vain, vain, vain, all else ! Eternity ! 570 

A glorious, and a needful refuge, that, 

From vile imprisonment in abject views. 

'Tis immortality, 'tis that alone. 

Amid life's pains, abasements, emptiness, 

The soul can comfort, elevate, and fill. 575 

That only, and that amply, this performs ; 

Lifts us above life's pains, her joys above ; 

Their terror those, and these thek lustre lose ; 

Eternity depending, covers all; 

Eternity depending, all achieves ; 580 

Sets earth at distance ; casts her into shades ; 

Blends her distinctions ; abrogates her pow'rs ; 

The low, the lofty, joyous, and severe. 

Fortune's dread frowns and fascinating smiles, 

Make one promiscuous and neglected heap, 585 

The man beneath ; if I may call him man, 

"Whom immortality's full force inspires. 

Nothing terrestrial touches his high thought : 

Suns shine unseen, and thunders roll unheard. 

By minds quite conscious of their high descent, 590 

Theii- present province and their future prize ; 

Divinely darting upward ev'ry wish. 

Warm on the wing, in glorious absence lost. 

Doubt you this truth ? Why labours your belief? 
If earth's whole orb, by some due distanced eye 595 

Were seen at once, her tow'ring Alps would sink, 
And levell'd Atlas leave an even sphere. 
Thus earth, and all that earthly minds admire, 
Is swallow'd in eternity's vast round. 

567. Thrones : occupants of thrones- 

571. That: (is) that. 

579. Depending : Hanging over. 



NIGHT VI. 



277 



To that stupendous view, wlien souls a.wake, 600 

So large of late, so mountainous to man, 
Time's toys subside ; and equal all below. 

Enthusiastic, tbis ? then all are weak, 
But rank enthusiasts. To this godhke height 
Some souls have soar'd ; or martyi-s ne'er had bled : 605 

And all may do what. has by man been done. 
Who, beaten by these sublunary storms, 
Boundless, interminable joys can weigh, 
Unraptured, unexalted, uninflamed ? 

What slave unblest, who from to-morrow's dawn 610 

Expects an empire ? he forgets his chain. 
And, throned in thought, his absent sceptre waves. 

And what a sceptre w^aits us ! what a throne ! 
Her own immense appointments to compute, 
Or comprehend her high prerogatives, 615 

In this her dark minority, how toils, 
How vainly pants the human soul divine ! 
Too great the bounty seems for earthly joy. 
What heart but trembles at so strange a bhss ? 

In spite of all the truths the muse has sung, 620 

Ne'er to be prized enough ! enough revolved ! 
Are there who wrap the world so close about them, 
They see no farther than the clouds ? and dance 
On heedless vanity's fantastic toe, 

Till, stumbhng at a straw, in their career, 625 

Headlong they plunge, where end both dance and song ? 
Are there, Lorenzo ? Is it j^ossible ? 
Are there, on earth (let me not call them men) 
Who lodge a soul immortal in their breasts ; 
Unconscious as the mountain of its ore, 630 

Or rock, of its inestimable gem ? 
When rocks shall melt, and mountains vanish, these 
Shall know their treasui'e, treasure then no more. 

614. Appointments : Things appointed to her, or designed for her. 



278 THE COMPLAINT. 



PROOFS OF IMMORTALITY. 



Are there (still more amazing !) who resist 
The rising thought? who smother, in its birth, 635 

The glorious truth ? who struggle to be brutes ? 
Who through this bosom-barrier burst their way, 
And, with reversed ambition, strive to sink ? 
Who labom* downwards through th' opposing pow'rs 
Of instinct, reason, and the world against them, 640 

To dismal hopes, and shelter in the shock 
Of endless night ? night darker than the grave's ! 
Who fight the proofs of immortality ? 
With horrid zeal, and execrable arts. 

Work all their engines, level their black fires, 645 

To blot from man this attribute divine, 
(Than vital blood far dearer to the wise) 
Blasphemers, and rank atheists to themselves ? 

To contradict them, see all nature rise ! 
What object, what event, the moon beneath, 650 

But argues, or endears, an after scene ? 
To reason proves, or weds it to desire ? 
All things proclaim it needful ; some advance 
One precious step beyond, and prove it sure. 
A thousand arguments swarm round my pen, 655 

From heav'n, and earth, and man. Indulge a few, 
By nature, as her common habit, worn ; 
So pressing Providence a truth to teach. 
Which truth untaught, all other truths were vain. 

THOU ! whose all providential eye surveys, 660 

Whose hand directs, whose Spirit fills and warms 
Creation, and holds empire far beyond ! 
Eternity's Inhabitant august ! 
Of two eternities amazing Lord ! 

One past, ere man's or angel's had begun ; 665 

Aid ! while I rescue from the foe's assault 

659. Which truth (being) untaught^ &c. 



NIGHT VI. 2^9 

Tliy glorious immortality in man : 

A theme for ever, and for all, of weight, 

Of moment infinite ! but relish'd most 

By those who love thee most, who most adore. 670 

Nature, thy daughter, ever-changing bhth 
Of thee the great Immutable, to man 
Speaks wisdom ; is his oracle supreme : 
And he who most consults her, is most wise. 
Lorenzo, to this heav'nly Delphos haste ; 675 

And come back all-immortal, all-divine ; 
Look natm-e through, 'tis revolution all ; 
All change, no death. Day follows night ; and night 
The dying day ; stars rise, and set, and rise ; 
Earth takes th' example. See the summer gay, 680 

With her green chaplet, and ambrosial fiow'i's, 
Droops into paUid autumn : winter grey, 
Horrid with frost, and turbulent with storm, 
Blows autumn and his golden fi'uits away ; 
Then melts into the spring : soft spring, with breath 685 

Favonian, from warm chambers of the south. 
Recalls the first. All, to re-flourish, fades ; 
As in a wheel, all sinks, to re-ascend. 
Emblems of man, who passes, not expires. 

With this minute distinction, emblems just, 690 

Nature revolves, but man advances ; both 
Eternal ; that a circle, this a line ; 

671. Birth: Product. TYlq first argument for immortaUty here intro- 
duced, consists in the perpetuity of matter, notwithstanding all the changes 
it undergoes. 

673. Oracle supreme : This is not correct. Revelation is superior; con- 
veys more light, incomparably, than Nature upon the question of immor- 
tality. " Our Saviour, Jesus Christ, hath abolished death, and brought life 
and immortality to light through the gospel." — 2 Tim. 1 : 10. 

675. Delphos : An allusion to a celebrated seat of the oracle of Apollo, m 
Greece. 

686. Breath Favonian: The pleasant western breeze, sometimes called 
Zephyr, and which served in Italy to break up the rigors of winter. 

687. The first : That is, summer. 



280 THE COMPLAINT. 

That gravitates, this soars. Th' aspiring soul, 

Ardent and tremulous, like flame, ascends ; 

Zeal, and humility, her wings to heav'n. 695 

The world of matter, with its yarious forms. 

All dies into new hfe. Life born from death 

Rolls the vast mass, and shall for ever roll. 

No single atom, once in being, lost. 

With change of counsel charges the Most High. TOO 

What hence infers Lorenzo ? Can it be ? 
Matter immortal ? And shall spirit die ? 

697. Life born from death : Life succeeding death (and as if proceeding 
from it) . 

702. Matter immortal 7 And shall spirit die ? A full discussion of this point 
may be found in Brown's Philosophy of the Mind, vol. iii. Lect. 96-7-8. 
Among other things he says: — When the body seems to us to perish we 
know that it does not truly perish : that everything that existed in the decaying 
frame continues to exist entire as it existed before ; and that the only change 
which takes place is a change of apposition or proximity. From the first 
moment at which the earth arose there is not the slightest reason to think 
that a single atom has perished. All that was is ; and if nothing has perish- 
ed in the material universe ; if even in that bodily dissolution, which alone 
gave occasion to the belief of our mortality as sentient beings, there is not 
the loss of the most inconsiderable particle of the dissolving frame, the argu- 
ment from analogy, far from leading us to suppose the destruction of that 
spiritual being which animated the frame, vuould lead us to conclude that it, 
too, exists as it before existed, and that it has only changed its lelation to 
the particles of our material organs as these particles still subsisting have 
changed the relations vi^hich they mutually bore. 

The continued subsistence of everything corporeal cannot be regarded as 
indicative of the annihilation of the other substance ; but must, on the con- 
trary, be regarded as a presumption in favor of the continued subsistence of 
the mind, when there is nothing around it vs^hich has perished, and nothing 
even which has perished in the whole material universe since the universe 
itself was called into being. The principle of thought (or the mind), what- 
ever it may be, is not divisible into parts ; and hence, though it may be an- 
nihilated, as everything vi^hich exists may be annihilated by the will of Him 
who can destroy as He could create, it does not admit of that decay of which 
the body admits— a decay that is relative to the frame only, not to the ele- 
ments that compose it. Mind, indeed, like matter, is capable of existing in 
various states, but a change of state is not destructive in one more than m 
the other. It is as entire in all its seeming changes as matter in all its 
seeming changes. 



NIGHT VI. 281 

Above tlie nobler, shall less noble rise ? 

Shall man alone, for whom all else revives, 

No resm-rection know ? Shall man alone, "705 

Imperial man ! be sown in barren gTound, 

Less privileged than grain, on which he feeds ? 

Is man, in whom alone is pow'r to prize 

The bhss of being, or with previous pain 

Deplore its period, by the spleen of fate, 710 

Severely doom'd death's single nnredeem'd ? 

K nature's revolution speaks aloud, 
In her gradation, hear her louder still. 
Look nature through, 'tis neat gradation all. 
By what minute degrees her scale ascends ! 715 

Each middle nature join'd at each extreme, 
To that above it join'd, to that beneath. 
Parts, into parts reciprocally shot. 
Abhor divorce : What love of union reigns ! 
Here, doi-mant matter waits a call to hfe ; 720 

Half-hfe, half-death, join there : here, hfe and sense ; 
There, sense from reason steals a glimm'ring ray ; 
Reason shines out in man. But how preserved 
The chain unbroken upward, to the realms 
Of incorporeal life ? those realms of bliss 725 

Where death has no dominion ? Grant a make 
Half mortal, half immortal ; earthy, part. 
And part ethereal ; grant the soul of man 
Eternal ; or in man the series ends. 

Wide yawns the gap ; connection is no more : 730 

Check'd reason halts ; her next step wants support ; 
Striving to chmb, she tumbles from her scheme ; 
A scheme analogy pronounced so true : 

710. Period : Termination. 

711. Death's single unredeem'd : The only object not redeemed from 
death : not restored to life. 

713. In her gradation, &c. : A second argument for man's immortality is 
here drawn from the successive grades of animated being. 



282 THE COMPLAINT. 

Analogy, man's siu'est guide below. 

Thus far, all natui-e calls on thy behef. 735 

And will Lorenzo, careless of the call, 
False attestation on all natui*e charge. 
Rather than violate his league ^\dth death ? 
Renounce his reason, rather than renounce 
The dust beloved, and run the risk of heav'n ? Y40 

O what indignity to deathless souls ! 
What treason to the majesty of man ! 
Of man immortal ! Hear the lofty style : 
' If so decreed, th' Almighty will be done, 
Let earth dissolve, yon pond'rous orbs descend, 745 

And grind us into dust. The soul is safe ; 
The man emerges ; mounts above the wi'eck. 
As tow'ring flame from nature's fun'ral pyre : 

734. Surest guide below : That is : the surest guide, revelation excepted. 
Bishop Butler has immortalized his name by his elaborate work on the 
" Analogy of Natural and Revealed Religion,''' from which some valuable 
quotations might be made to illustrate and conJEirm the arguments of our 
author. As this work appeared in 1736, it is not improbable that Dr. Young 
had enjoyed the benefit of a perusal. The first chapter is devoted to the 
subject of a future life, the proofs being drawn from analogy^ that is, from 
resemblance in things which are known to things which are unknown. It 
is a course of reasoning from the relations which things known bear to 
things unknown. It is " arguing from what is acknowledged to what is 
disputed ; from things known to other things which resemble them ; from 
that part of the divine establishment which is exposed to our view to that 
more important one which lies beyond it — a method by which Sir Isaac 
Newton unfolded the system of Nature." For the sake of those who may 
not have a copy of this standard work, it may be useful to communicate the 
outlines of the argument pursued by Bishop Butler on this single topic of a 
future life. This will be given at the close of Night VI. 

748. Nature'' s furi'ral pyre : An allusion to the funeral pile on which 
among the ancients the dead body was burned. It was built of split wood 
that readily burns, and was graduated as to height by the rank and wealth ol 
the deceased. The corpse, being laid upon it, was sprinkled with spices or 
anointed with oil. The wood is kindled with a torch by some near rela- 
tive. It was usual, with the body of the deceased to consume articles of 
clothing or weapons of war that had been owned by him ; also any offerings 
presented in honor of him. When all had been consumed, wine was poured 



NIGHT YI. 283 

O'er devastation as a gainer smiles ; 

His charter, his inviolable rights, '750 

"Well pleased to learn from thunder's impotence, 

Death's pointless darts, and hell's defeated storms.' 

But these chimeras touch thee not, Lorenzo ! 
The glories of the world thy sev'nfold shield. 
Other ambition than of crowns in air, ^55 

And superlunaiy fehcities, 
Thy bosom warm. I'll cool it, if I can : 
And turn those glories that enchant, against thee. 
"What ties thee to this hfe, proclaims the next. 
If wise, the cause that woimds thee is thy cm'e. 760 

WONDERS OF HUMAN ART, GENIUS, AND POWER. 

Come, my ambitious ! let us moimt together, 
(To mount Lorenzo never can refuse ;) 
And from the clouds, where pride dehghts to dwell, 

on the smoking remains to extinguish thera ; the bones were collected, and, 
together with some of the ashes and perfumes, were placed in an urn of 
metal, clay, or stone. The urn was then deposited in the earth or in a 
tomb. 

The most Temo.r'ka.'hle funeral pyre that occurs to us in classical literature, 
is the celebrated one which the Queen of Carthage directed to be made 
ostensibly for consuming the memorials of her faithless lover ^neas : which 
however she first ascended herself, and committing suicide, was consumed 
with all that reminded her of the now hated Trojan leader. 
" At regina, _2:)yr(3 penetrali in sede snb auras 

Erecta ingenti, tedis atque ilice secta, 

Intenditque locum sertis, et fronde coronat 

Funerea : super, exuyias, ensemque relictum, 

Effigiemque toro locat, haud ignara faturL 

Stant arae circum ;" &G.—JE7ieid, IV. 504, 521, 642, 66S. 

753-56. These lines are in the style of irony, and are to be understood in 
a sense contrary to what is literally expressed. The chimera was an oddly 
constructed animal of ancient classical fable, too monstrous to be conceived 
as ever having had a real existence ; and hence the name has come to be 
used to designate any mere creature of the imagination, having no existence 
except in thought, and too absurd to be regarded as a reality. 

756 Superlunary felicities : Fehcities above the moon, heavenly. 



284 THE COMPLAINT. 

Look down on earth. — What seest thou ? Wondrous things ! 

Terrestrial wonders, that eclipse the skies. 765 

What lengths of labour'd lands ! what loaded seas ! 

Loaded by man, for pleasure, wealth, or war ! 

Seas, winds, and planets, into service brought, 

His art acknowledge, and promote his ends. 

Nor can th' eternal rocks his will withstand. TVO 

What levell'd mountains ! and what hfted vales ! 

O'er vales and mountains sumptuous cities swell, 

And gild our landscape with their ghtt'ring spires. 

Some 'mid the wond'ring waves majestic rise ; 

And Neptune holds a mirror to their charms. 7 7 5 

Far greater still ! (what cannot mortal might ?) 

See wide dominions ravish' d from the deep ! 

774. Some : Namely, Venice. Says Byron — 

" I saw from out the wave a structiu-e rise 
As from the stroke of the enchantcr''s wand : 
A thousand years their cloudy wings expand 
Ajound me, and a dying glory smiles 
O'er the far times, when many a subject land 
Looked to the wing'd lion's marble piles, 
Where Venice sat in state, throned on her hundred isles." 

Rogers more particularly describes the position of this city : — 

" There is a glorious city in the sea. 
The sea is in the broad, the narrow streets, 
Ebbing and flowing ; and the salt sea-weed 
Clings to the marble of her palaces. 
No track of men, no footsteps to and fro, 
Lead to her gates. The path lies o'er the sea 
Invisible ; and from the land we went, 
As to a floating city — steering in, 
And gliding up her streets as in a dream, 
So smoothly, silently — by many a dome 
Mosque-like, and many a stately portico. 
The statues ranged along an azure sky ; 
By many a pile in more than Eastern splendour, 
Of old the residence of merchant kings." 

777. RavisWd from the deep : Holland may be taken as an illustration, 
where, by means of embankments, or dikes, the ocean has been shut out, 
and large tracts have thus been rendered habitable. The shores {says 
Goodrich) are remarkably low and flat, and a great part of the country 
would be laid under water by the tides were it not for the enormous dikes 



NIGHT VI. 285 

The naiTow'd deep with indignation foams. 

Or southward turn ; to delicate and grand, 

The finer arts there ripen in the sun. 780 

How the tall temples, as to meet their gods, 

Ascend the skies ! the proud triumphal arch 

Shows us half heav'n beneath its ample bend. 

High through mid air, here streams are taught to flow ; 

erected along the coast. These dikes employ annually more men than all 
the corn of the province of Holland can maintain. They are mostly thirty 
feet in height and seventy broad at bottom. They are built of clay, faced 
on the land side with wood and stone, and toward the sea with mats of 
rushes and sea- weed. 

781-4. Tall temples^ &c. : Those of Italy, and of Rome more particularly. 
St. Peter's church is one of the architectural wonders of the world, exciting 
in the beholder exquisite emotions of sublimity and beauty. Of it, Byron 
has thus written, 

" But thou, of temples old, or altars new, 

Standest alone — with nothing like to thee — 

"Worthiest of God, the holy and the true. 

Since Zion's desolation, when that He 

Forsook his former city, what could be, 

Of earthly structures in his honor piled, 

Of a sublimer aspect ? Majesty, 

Power, glory, strength, and beauty, all are aisled 

In this eternal ark of worship undefilcd." 

For the remainder of his beautiful description see Childe Harold, Canto IV. 

782. Triumphal arch : An immense structure in honor of some victory or 
conqueror, sometimes a single arch, decorated with a statue and military 
spoils ; sometimes arches were constructed v^'ith two or three passages, serv- 
ing as gates. The principal arches of antiquity were those erected in honor 
of Augustus, Trajan, Septimius Severus, and Constantine, some of which 
are still to be seen and in a good state of preservation, 

784. High through midair^ &c. : Dr. W. Fisk, in his Travels, says, another 
class of ruins in and about Rome are the aqueducts. These, among the 
ancient Romans, were numerous and splendid ; and I scarcely saw anything 
more picturesque and grand than the remaining arches of these stupendous 
water-courses, stretching across the Campagna from various directions, some 
of them, by modern repairs, still rolling their refreshing streams into the 
eternal city. These aqueducts are led from the distance of twenty or thirty 
miles, and used to convey into the ancient city five hundred thousand hogs- 
heads of water daily, although at present only about one fifth of that amount 
is brought into the city. The Aqua Paulina is from Trajan's aqueduct, and 



286 THE COMPLAINT. 

Whole rivers, there, laid by in basons, sleep. '785 

Here, plains turn oceans ; there, vast oceans join 
Thro' kingdoms channel'd deep from shore to shore ; 
And changed creation takes its face from man. 
Beats thy brave breast for formidable scenes, 
Where fame and empire wait upon the sword ? 790 

See fields in blood ; hear naval thunders rise ; 
Britannia's voice ! that awes the world to peace. 
How yon enormous mole projecting breaks 
The mid-sea furious waves ! their roar amidst. 
Out-speaks the Deity, and says, ' main ! 795 

Thus far, nor farther : new restraints obey.' 
Earth's disembowel'd ! measured are the skies ! 
Stars are detected in their deep recess ! 
Creation widens ! vanquish'd nature yields ! 
Her secrets are extorted ! Ai-t prevails ! 800 

What monument of genius, spirit, pow'r ! 
And now, Lorenzo, raptured at this scene, 

extends thirty miles, and is divided into two branches, one of which sup- 
plies the ISIount Janiculum and empties itself principally, in copious tor- 
rents, under a splendid Ionic colonnade of red granite into a vast marble 
basin. There is water enough poured out here to carry several mills. The 
other branch goes to the Vatican and expends itself in the magnificent piazza 
of St. Peter's, in two fountains, which throw up the water in foaming 
columns many feet into the air, whence it comes down in copious showers. 
The main body of the water falls into magnificent basins of oriental granite, 
fifty feet in circumference. 

We read that the waters of the river Anio were conducted to Rome in two 
channels, one forty-three, the other sixty-three miles in length, of the latter 
of which more than six miles formed a continuous series of arches, many of 
which were upwards of one hundred feet high. And there are remains of 
Roman aqueducts in other parts of Europe which must have been origin- 
ally more vast and magnificent than those we have already mentioned. 
There are also aqueducts in modern times, particularly in France, which 
equal those of the ancients. We have no space for other illustrations of the 
wonders of art, to which our author alludes. 

797. DisemboweVd : That is, by the miner ; while the skies are measured 
J)y the astronomer. Young thus delights to bring together remarkable con- 
trasts. 



NIGHT VI. 287 

Whose glories lender heav'n superfluous ! say, 

Whose footsteps these ? — Immortals have been here. 

Could less than souls immortal this have done ? 805 

Earth's cover'd o'er with proofs of souls immortal ; 

And 23roofs of immortality forgot. 

To flatter thy grand foible, I confess. 
These are ambition's works ; and these are gi-eat ; 
But this the least immortal souls can do : 810 

Transcend them all— But what can these transcend ? 
Dost ask me, what ? — One sigh for the distrest. 
What then for infidels ? — A deeper sigh ! 
'Tis moral grandeur makes the mighty man : 
How little they, who think aught great below! 815 

All our ambitions death defeats but one ; 

803. Render heaven superfluous : Another example of irony. 

805. An elegant argument is here drawn in favour of the souJ's immor- 
tality from the previous sketch of what the human mind has originated in 
the department of industry, genius, and art. 

These glorious footsteps (says Dr. Thomas Brown) are indeed the foot- 
steps of immortals ! Yet it is not the mere splendour of the works them- 
selves, on which this argument insists so much, that seems directly to indi- 
cate the immortality of their authors. Man might be mortal and yet per- 
form all these wonders, or wonders still more illustrious. It is not hy con- 
sidering the relation of the mind to the m.onuments of its art as too excellent 
to he the work of a perishable being ; but by considering the relations of a 
mind capable of these, to the being who has endov/ed it with such capaci- 
ties, and who is able to perpetuate or enlarge the capacities which he has 
given, that we discover in the excellence which we admire not a joroq/" indeed 
but a presumption of immortality : a presumption at least which is far from 
leading us to infer any peculiar intention in the Preserver of the body to 
annihilate the mind. 

This argument is expanded in his Philosophy of the Mind, vol. iii. 517-8 

810. The least immortal^ he. : The feeblest immortal souls can do this 
thing : namely, transcend those works of art. The question then is asked, 
what can transcend those (works) 1 To which it is answered (812), sympa- 
thy for the distressed; and (813), a deeper pity for infidels. Such emotions 
indicate more true greatness, discover the operations of a higher nature, than 
does even the powerful intelligence which shines in the grandeurs, and utili- 
ties, and beauties of art. 

816. Our ambitions : Our objects of ambition. 



288 THE COMPLAINT. 

And that it crowns. — Here cease we : but, ere long 
More powerful proof shall take the field against thee, 
Stronger than death, and smiling at the tomb. 



BISHOP BUTLER'S ARGUMENT FROM ANALOGY FOR A 
FUTURE STATE. 

In the note on (734) we promised an outline of the argument from ana- 
logy which Bishop Butler has constructed : we now give it as it is presented 
in Bishop Wilson's analysis. 

From considering the analogy of nature it will appear that there is no- 
thing improbable in what religion teaches, that we are to exist in another 
life af^^r death. There is, indeed, a confused suspicion that in the great 
shock of the unknown event, death, our living powers will be destroyed. 
The sensible proof of our being possessed of these powers is removed. 
Death is terrible to us. Nature shrinks from it. Yet, when we come 
calmly to consider these apprehensions, we shall find them to be ground- 
less. 

1. For it is clearly a general law of nature, that the same creatures should 
exist here in very different degrees of life and perception. We see instances 
of this law in the surprising change of worms into flies, and in birds and 
insects bursting their shell, and entering into a new world furnished w^ith new 
accommodations for them. The states also in which we ourselves existed 
formerly in the womb, and in the years of infancy, are widely (Afferent from 
the state of mature age. Nothing can be imagined more different. There- 
fore, that we are to exist, hereafter, in a state as different from our pre- 
sent, as this is from our former one, is only according to the analogy of 
nature. • 

2. There is a probability, in every case, that ail things will continue as 
we now find them in all respects, except those in which we have some posi- 
tive reason to think they will be altered. This is a general law. Nature 
goes on as it is. This seems our only reason for believing that the course 
of the world will continue to-morrow as it is to-day, and as it has done, so 
far as history and experience can carry us back. If then our living powers 
do not continue after death, there must be some positive reason for this, 
either m death itself or in the analogy of nature. 

But there is no positive reason in death itself for we know not what it is : 
we only know some of its effects, such as the dissolution of flesh, skin, and 
bones ; and these effects in no wise appear to imply the destruction of the 
living agent. Sleep, or a swoon, shows us that the living powers may exist 



NIGHT VI. 289 

"when there is no present capacity of exercising them. In fact we know 
not upon what the existence of our living powers depends. 

Nor does the analogy of nature furnish any positive reason to think that 
death is our destruction. For we have no faculties wherewith to trace any- 
thing beyond, or through, death, to see what becomes of those powers. 
Men were possessed of these powers up to the period to which we have 
faculties for tracing them : it is probable, therefore, that they retain them 
afterwards. 

3. For our gross bodies are not ourselves, and therefore the destruction 
of them may be no destruction of ourselves. We see that men may lose 
their limbs, their organs of sense, and even the greatest part of their bodies, 
and yet remain the same living agents as before. Our organized bodies are 
merely quantities of matter which may be alienated, and actually are in a 
daily course of succession and change, whilst we remain the same living, 
permanent beings notwithstanding. As, therefore, we have already several 
times over lost a great part of our body, or perhaps the whole of it, accord- 
ing to certain common established laws of nature ; so when we shall lose as 
great a part, or the whole, by another common established law of nature, 
death, why may we not also remain the same. That the alienation has 
been gradual in one case, and will be more at once in the other, proves no- 
thing to the contrary. 

4. But, more particularly, our bodies are clearly only organs and instru- 
ments of perception and motion. Our use of common optical instruments 
shows that we see with our eyes in the same sense as we see with glasses. 
These glasses, which are no part of our body, convey objects towards the 
perceiving power, just as our bodily organs do. And if we see with our 
eyes only in this manner, the like may be concluded as to all our other 
senses. So with regard to the power of moving : upon the destruction of a 
limb, the active power remains ; and we can walk by the help of an artifi- 
cial leg, just as we can make use of a pole to reach things beyond the length 
of the natural arm. We may therefore have no more relation to our exter- 
nal bodily organs, than we have to a microscope or a staff, or any other 
foreign matter, which we use as instruments of perception or motion ; and 
the dissolution of these organs by death may be no destruction of the living 
agent, 

5. But, further, our powers of reflection do not, even now, depend on 
our gross body in the same manner as perception by the organs of sense does. 
In our present condition, the organs of sense are indeed necessary for con- 
veying in ideas to our reflecting powers, as carriages, levers, and scaffolds 
are in architecture ; but when these ideas are once brought in. and stored up 
in the mind, we are capable of pleasure and pain by reflection, without any 
further assistance from our senses. Mortal diseases often do not at all affect 
our intellectual powers, nor even suspend them. We see persons under those 
diseases, the moment before death, discover apprehension, memory, rea- 

13 



290 THE COMPLAINT. 

son, all entire ; the utmost force of affection, and the highest mental enjoy- 
ments and sufferings. Why then should a disease, when come to a certain 
degree, be thought to destroy those powers which do not depend on the 
bodily senses, and which were not affected by that disease quite up to that 
degree ? 



PREFACE 

TO 

PAET II. 
OF THE INFIDEL RECLAIMED. 



As we are at war with the power, it were well if we were at war with 
the manners, of France. A land of levity is a land of guilt. A serious 
mind is the native soil of every virtue, and the single character that does 
true honour to mankind. The soul^s immortality has been the favourite 
theme with the serious of all ages. Nor is it strange : it is a subject by far 
the most interesting and important that can enter the mind of man. Of 
highest moment this subject always was, and always will be. Yet this its 
highest moment seems to admit of increase, at this day : a sort of occasional 
importance is superadded to the natural weight of it, if that opinion which 
is advanced in the Preface to the preceding Night be just. It is there sup- 
posed that all our infidels, whatever scheme, for argument's sake, and to 
keep themselves in countenance, they patronise, are betrayed into their de- 
plorable error, by some doubts of their immortality at the bottom. And the 
more I consider this point, the more I am persuaded of the truth of that 
opinion. Though the distrust of a futurity is a strange error, yet it is an 
error into which bad men may naturally be distressed. For it is impossible 
to bid defiance to final ruin, without some refuge in imagination, some pre- 
sumption of escape. And what presumption is there ? There are but two 



292 PREFACE. 

in nature ; but two, within the compass of human thought : and these are, — 
That either God will not, or cannot punish. Considering the divine attri- 
butes, the first is too gross to be digested by our strongest wishes. And, 
since omnipotence is as much a divine attribute as holiness, that God cannot 
punish, is as absurd a supposition as the former. God certainly can punish, 
as long as wicked men exist. In non-existence, therefore, is their only re- 
fuge ; and, consequently, non-existence is their strongest wish; And strong 
wishes have a strange influence on our opinions ; they bias the judgment in. 
a manner almost incredible. And since on this member of their alter- 
native, there are some very small appearances in their favour, and none 
at all on the other, they catch at this reed, they lay hold on this chimera, 
to save themselves from the shock and horror of an immediate and abso- 
lute despair. 

On reviewing my subject, by the light which this argument, and others 
of like tendency, threw upon it, I was more inclined than ever to pursue it^ 
as it appeared to me to strike directly at the main root of all our infidelity. 
In the following pages it is accordingly pursued at large ; and some argu- 
ments for immortality, new, at least to me, are ventured on in them. There, 
also, the writer has made an attempt to set the gross absurdities and horrors 
of annihilation in a fuller and more afiecting view, than is, I think, to be 
met with elsewhere. 

The gentlemen for whose sake tbis attempt was chiefly made, profess 
great admiration for the wisdom of heathen antiquity : what pity 'tis they 
are not sincere ! If they were sincere, how would it mortify them to con- 
sider with what contempt and abhorrence their notions would have been 
received, by those whom they so much admire ? What degree of contempt 
and abhorrence would fall to their share, may be conjectured by the follow- 
ing matter of fact, in my opinion, extremely memorable. Of all their 
heathen worthies, Socrates, 'tis well known, was the most guarded, dispas- 
sionate, and composed : yet this great master of temper was angry ; and 
angry at his last hour ; and angry with his friend ; and angry for what de- 
served acknowledgment ; angry for a right and tender instance of true friend- 
ship towards him. Is not this surprising? What could be the cause? The 
cause was for his honour ; it was a truly noble, though, perhaps, a too 
punctilious regard for immortality ; for his friend asking him, with such an 
affectionate concern as became a friend, ' Where he should deposit his re- 



PREFACE. 293 

mains V it was resented by Socrates, as implying a dishonourable supposi- 
tion, that he could be so mean as to have regard for any thing, even in him- 
self, that was not immortal. 

This fact, well considered, would make our infidels withdraw their admi- 
ration from Socrates ; or make them endeavour, by their imitation of this 
illustrious example, to share his glory : and, consequently, it would incline 
them to peruse the following pages with candour and impartiality ; which 
is all I desire, and that for their sakes : for I am persuaded, that an un- 
prejudiced infidel must, necessarily, receive some advantageous impressions 
from them, 

July 7, 1744. 



NIGHT VII. 



BEING 
THE SECOND PART 

OF 

THE iroiDEL RECLAIMED. 

CONTAINING THE NATURE, PROOF, AND IMPORTANCE OF IMMORTALITY. 



Heav'n gives the needful, but neglected, call. 
What day, what hour, but knocks at human hearts 
To wake the soul to sense of future scenes ? 
Deaths stand, like Mercuries, in ev'ry way, 
And kindly point us to our journey's end. 
Pope, who couldst make immortals, art thou dead ? 
I give thee joy : nor will I take my leave ; 

4. Like Mercuries : Statues, or rather busts, of Mercury, a Pagan god. 
The more ancient ones are here intended, which were simply quadrangular 
pillars of stone with a rudely-carved head surmounting them ; and these in 
great numbers, were set up in the streets of Athens in front of temples and 
also of dwelling houses. The Romans employed similar stones to indicate 
the boundaries of lands. 

6. Pope: Alexander Pope, the distinguished English satirist, and the 
poetic translator of Homer into English rhyme : a contemporary and friend 
of Young. He died May 30, 1744, at the age of fifty-six. 



NIGHT VII. 295 

So soon to follow. Man but dives in death ; 

Dives from the sun, in fairer day to rise ; 

The gi-ave, his subterranean road to bliss. 10 

Yes, infinite indulgence plann'd it so : 

Through vaiious parts our glorious story runs ; 

Time gives the preface, endless age unrolls 

The volume (ne'er enroU'd !) of human fate. 

This earth and skies already have proclaim' d, 15 

The world's a prophecy of worlds to come : 
And who, what God foretells (who speaks in things 
Still louder than in words) shall dare deny ? 
If nature's arguments appear too weak, 

Tui-n a new leaf, and stronger read in man. 20 

If man sleeps on, untaught by what he sees. 
Can he prove infidel to what he feels ? 
He, whose bhnd thought futurity denies. 
Unconscious bears, Bellerophon ! like thee, 

8. Dives in death : The figure here employed is not happily executed ; for 
in (10) the grave is described as the road to bliss. The grave, unless 
aqueous, would not be a good element to dive in. The figure would not 
answer for any but those who meet their death by falling into the water. 

13. Time gives, &c. : The history of man is here ingeniously alluded to. 

15. Ea7-th and skies, &c. : Reference is made to a part of Night VI. from 
167—190. 

16. ^prophecy of worlds, &c. : What we see in this world leads us to anti- 
cipate existence in other worlds. 

20. In man : Having, in the last Night, elucidated the argument from ex- 
ternal nature, our author passes to consider that w^hich may be deduced from 
the human constitution ; from the feelings, the passions, the reason of man. 

24. Bellerophon, he. : The allusion here is exceedingly apt and beautiful, as 
will be seen from the relation of a part of the classical fable concerning this 
man. Being endow^ed with great personal vigor and beauty, the wife of 
Praetus, king of Argos, allowed herself to indulge an unlawful attachment to 
him. The virtuous youth, like Joseph in a similar case, rejected her infa- 
mous advances ; and, like Joseph, was accused of the perpetration of the crime 
which he had refused to commit. The king believed the lie, and sent Belle- 
rophon to his wife's father, king of Lycia, with a sealed letter containing 
instructions to put the bearer to death, and assigning the cause. Bellerophon 



296 THE COMPLAINT. 

His own indictment ; lie condemns himself: 25 

Who reads his bosom, reads immortal life ; 
Or, Nature, there, imposing on her sons, 
Has written fables ; man was made a he. 

ARGUMENT FOUNDED ON MAN's DISCONTENT. 

Why discontent for ever harbour'd there ? 
Incurable consumption of our peace ! 30 

Resolve me, why the cottager and king, 
He whom sea-sever'd realms obey, and he 
Who steals his whole dominion from the waste, 
RepeUing winter blasts with mud and straw. 
Disquieted ahke, draw sigh for sigh, 35 

In fate so distant, in complaint so near ? 

Is it, that things terrestrial can't content ? 
Deep in rich pasture, ;\vill thy flocks complain ? 
'Not so ; but to their master is denied 

To share then sweet serene. Man, ill at ease, 40 

In this, not his own place, this foreign field, 
Where Nature fodders him with other food 
Than was ordain'd his craving's to suffice. 
Poor in abuD dance, famish'd at a feast, 

Sighs on for something more, when most enjoy'd. 45 

Is Heav'n then kinder to thy flocks than thee ? 
Not so ; thy pasture richer, but remote ; 
In part, remote ; for that remoter part 

was unconscious that he was bearing his own indictment ; his own condemna- 
tion. 

28. Man was made a lie : So made as to deceive all our just expectation. 

29. Why discontent^ &c. : This feature of man argues a future state in 
Avhich this feeling shall not exist ; in which the universal appetite for some- 
thing higher and better than earth affords shall meet with adequate and 
appropriate objects for its gratification. 

31. Resolve me: Inform me ; free me from doubt. 
40. Serene : Serenity ; contentment. 
45. Enjoy'd: is enjoy'd. 



NIGHT VII. 29*7 

Man bleats from instinct, tho' perhaps, debaucli'd 

By sense, his reason sleeps, nor dreams the cause. 50 

The cause how obvious, when his reason wakes ! 

His grief is but his grandeur in disguise ; 

And discontent is immortahty. 

Shall sons of ether, shall the blood of heav'n, 
Set up their hopes on earth, and stable here, 55 

With brutal acquiescence in the mire ? 
Lorenzo, no ! they shall be nobly pain'd ; 
The glorious foreigner, distrest, shall sigh 
On thrones ; and thou congratulate the sigh. 
Man's misery declares him born for bliss ; 60 

His anxious heart asserts the truth I sing, 
And gives the sceptic in his head the he. 

ARGUMENT FROM OUR VARIOUS SUSCEPTIBILITIES AND POWERS. 

Our heads, our hearts, om' passions, and our pow'rs, 
Speak the same language ; call us to the skies : 
Unripen'd these in this inclement clime, 65 

Scarce rise above conjecture, and mistake ; 
And for this land of trifles those too strong 
Tumultuous rise, and tempest human hfe : 
What prize on earth can pay us for the storm ? 
Meet objects for our passions heav'n ordain'd, 70 

Objects that challenge all their fire, and leave 
No fault but in defect : blest Heav'n ! avert 
A bounded ardour for unbounded bliss ; 
O for a bliss unbounded ! far beneath 
A soul immortal, is a mortal joy. 75 

53. Is immortality : Is an earnest, or pledge of it. 

63. Our heads, &c. : The argument is, that our various passions and other 
powers have in this life no sufficient objects of gratification. 

68. Tempest human life: Destroy the peace of human life. Tempest is 
used as a verb. 

72. No fault but in defect: In the defect or feebleness of our desire for 
them ; their only fault lies in our bounded ardour (73). 



298 THE COMPLAINT. 

Nor are our pow'rs to perish immature ; 

But, after feeble eflbrt here, beneath 

A brighter sun, and in a nobler soil. 

Transplanted fi'om this sublunary bed, 

Shall floui'ish fair, and put forth all then* bloom. 80 

ARGUMENT FROM THE GRADUAL AND IMPERFECT GROWTH OF 

REASON. 

Reason progressive, instinct is complete ; 
Swift instinct leaps ; slow reason feebly chmbs. 
Brutes soon their zenith reach ; their Httle all 
Flows in at once ; in ages they no more 

Could know, or do, or covet, or enjoy. 85 

Were man to Hve coeval with the sun. 
The patriarch pupil would be learning still ; 
Yet, dying, leave his lesson half unlearn'd. 
Men peiish in advance, as if the sun 

Should set ere noon, in eastern oceans drown'd ; 90 

If fit, with dim, illustrious to compare. 
The sun's meridian, with the soul of man. 
To man, why, step-dame Nature ! so severe ? 
Why thrown aside thy master-piece, half wrought. 
While meaner efforts thy last hand enjoy ? 95 

Or, if abortively poor man must die, 

81. Reason progressive : Reason in man is contrasted with the instinct of 
lower animals. The fact that the latter soon reaches perfection argues that 
this state of existence is all which the lower animals shall enjoy : while on 
the same principle, the ever-improving hut at best imperfectly developed 
reason of man, leads us to infer that his existence is not completed on earth 
but will be resumed and continued elsewhere. Otherwise the Creator 
would seem to have left his best earthly production incomplete; and to be 
less kind to man than to inferior creatures. 

87. Patriarch pupil : Aged learner. 

89. In advance : Sooner than their fit time. 

91. With dim (things). 

92. Sun's meridian : The sun at mid-day. 



NIGHT VII. ^ 299 

Nor reach what reach he might, why die in dread ? 

Why curst with foresight ? Wise to misery ? 

Why of his proud prerogative the prey ? 

Why less pre-eminent in rank than pain ? 100 

His immortahty alone can tell : 

Full ample fand to balance all amiss, 

And tm-n the scale in favour of the just ! 

ARGUMENT FROM HUMAN HOPES. 

His immortahty alone can solve 
That darkest of enigmas, human hope — 10£ 

Of all the darkest, if at death we die. 
Hope, eager hope, th' assassin of our joy, 
All present blessings treading under foot, 
Is scarce a milder tyrant than despair. 

With no past toils content, still planning new, 110 

Hope turns us o'er to death alone for ease. 
Possession, why more tasteless than pursuit ? 
Why is a wish far dearer than a cro\\Ti ? 
That wish accomphsh'd, why the grave of bliss ? 
Because, in the great future buried deep, 115 

Beyond om- plans of empire and renown. 
Lies all that man with ardour should pm-sue ; 
And HE who made him, bent liim to the right. 

Man's heart th' Almighty to the futm-e sets. 
By secret and in\'iolable springs ; 120 

And makes his hope his sublunary joy. 
Man's heart eats all things, and is hungry still ; 
' More, more !' the glutton cries ; for something new 
So rages appetite, if man can't mount, 

97. Why die in dread : Another argument for immortality. If man is nor 
destined to another life, why has God implanted in his nature a dread of 
death, such as the lower animals are not troubled with ? 

105. That darkest of enigmas : Or things hard to be explained— /i?«vja?; 
hope: The expectation of a future life implanted in our very nature ; and 
why ? if there be no future life. This forms the next argument. 



300 THE COMPLAINT. 

He will descend. lie starves on the possest. 125 

Hence, tlie world's master, from ambition's spire, 

In Caprea plunged ; and dived beneatli the brute. 

In that rank sty why wallow'd emi^ire's son 

Supreme ? Because he could no higher fly ; 

His riot was ambition in despair. 130 

Old Rome consulted birds : Lorenzo ! thou, 
With more success, the flight of hope survey : 
Of restless hope, for ever on the \mig. 
High perch'd o'er ev'ry thought that falcon sits, 
To fly at all that rises in her sight ; 135 

And, never stooping, but to mount again 
Next moment, she betrays her aim's mistake. 
And o^TQs her quarry lodged beyond the grave. 

ARGUMENT FROM THE NATURE AND REWARDS OF VIRTUE. 

There should it fail us, (it must fail us there. 
If being fails) more mournful riddles rise, 140 

And vii-tue \ies with hope in mystery. 

127. In Caprea plunged: From the grandeur of the imperial throne 
plunged into the loneliness of a small and sequestered island which com- 
mands a fine view of the charming bay of Naples. The dark- minded, im- 
perious, and profligate Tiberius chose this inviting spot as his residence 
during the latter part of his reign, where, unmolested and unrebuked by the 
public eye, he might give unbridled license to his debaucheries and cruelties 
— the report of which almost exceeds belief 

131. Consulted birds : As means of foretelling future events the ancient 
Romans noticed the chirping or flying of birds. From this custom, though 
a foolish one, our author constructs a beautiful figure. Hope is represented 
as one of these birds that give omen of the future ; the flight of hope survey. 
The figure is then somewhat changed. Hope is now a falcon (134), a female 
hawk, trained to catch wild fowl that rise in her sight. They are called her 
quarry., the game she pursues. This was a great sport in Europe some few 
centuries since ; and continued until the improvement of fire-arms furnished 
a readier method of securing the object. 

According to the figure, borrowed from this sport, Hope cannot in this 
world find the objects she is pursuing : they are lodged beyond the grave. 

141. Virtue vies with hope in mystery : If there be no future state, Virtue 
is, equally with Hope, an enigma, or riddle; the motives to virtue are re- 



NIGHT VII. 301 

Why virtue ? Where its praise, its being fled ? 

Virtue is true self-interest pursued : 

What true self-interest of quite-mortal man ? 

To close with all that makes him happy here. 145 

If vice (as sometimes) is our friend on earth, 

Then vice is virtue ; 'tis our sov'reign good. 

In self-applause is virtue's golden prize ; 

N'o self-applause attends it on thy scheme : 

Whence self-applause? From conscience of the right. 150 

And what is right, but means of happiness ? 

ISTo means of happiness when vu'tue yields ; 

That basis faihng, falls the building too, 

And lays in ruin ev'ry \drtuous joy, 

moved ; the obligations to it are weakened, nay, destroyed. Why virtue ? 
why should there be virtue ? Where its praise^ &c. : If there be no future 
state where is the praise of virtue fled ; where is its very existence fled ? 
Virtue (according to the theory of our author) is true self-interest pursued; 
it is the pursuit of happiness. If man then be quite mortal, his happiness 
must lie in the pursuit of earthly and present enjoyments. But vice often 
makes men happy here (145-7) : hence vice is virtue. This is a mystery 
(141), It cannot be explained or credited. It is not to be admitted. 

But there is another mystery : the chief prize of virtue is self -applause. 
On the infidel scheme, however, (which confines man's existence to this 
life) there can be no self-applause — that which proceeds from conscience of 
the right (consciousness of doing right), or from the conviction that we are 
pursuing the road of happiness — or using the means of happiness. But there 
are no means of happiness when virtue yields^ or where virtue is absent, and 
(as the author maintains (142), and afterwards (247 — 250) there can be no 
virtue except inspired by the hope of immortality. Nay, virtue, independent 
of a belief of immortality, is a crime (709). 

Upon this argument it may be remarked, that the author's definition of 
virtue is unsound, as will be shown hereafter ; that the chain of reasoning 
wants several links to make it intelligible to the common mind ; and that it 
is illogical, by using the term happiness in two quite different senses — in the 
sense of present happiness arising even from vice (145-6), and again in the 
sense either of future happiness growing out of virtuous conduct in this life, 
or of such gratifications in this life as virtue alone can produce. If this dis- 
tinction be not observed, arid did not exist in the author's mind, how can we 
reconcile the statements in 145-7 and that in 152 ? 



302 THE COMPLAINT. 

The rigid guardian of a blameless heart 155 

So long revered, so long reputed wise, 
Is weak ; with rank knight-errantries o'er-run. 
Why beats thy bosom with illustrious dreams 
Of self-exposure, laudable and great ? 

Of gallant enterprise, and glorious death ? 160 

Die for thy country ? — thou romantic fool ! 
Seize, seize the plank thyself, and let her sink : 
Thy country ! what to thee ? — The Godhead, what ? 
(I speak with awe !) tho' He should bid thee bleed ; 
If, with thy blood, thy final hope is spUt, 165 

JSTor can Omnipotence reward the blow ; 
Be deaf; preserve thy being; disobey. 

Nor is it disobedience : know, Lorenzo ! 
Whate'er th' Almighty's subsequent command, 
His first command is this : — ' Man, love thyself.' 170 

In this alone, free agents are not free. 
Existence is the basis, bliss the prize ; 
If virtue costs existence, 'tis a crime ; 
Bold violation of our law supreme, 

Black suicide ; though nations, which consult . 1*75 

Their gain, at thy expense, resound applause. 

Since virtue's recompense is doubtful here, 

155-176. The. rigid guardian^ &c. : The argument is that if there be no 
future life, the conscientious guardianship of the purity of the heart — the 
cultivation of a blameless state of the affections — is no more to be approved 
as wise or important, but is to be classed for its folly with the ridiculous ex- 
ploits of a Don Quixote. 

Then also the patriot who sacrifices his life for his country, and the Chris- 
tian martyr who dies in the cause of religion at the command of God even 
act an unwarrantable part. They are bound to preserve their life and not 
thus sacrifice it. In so sacrificing it, they are chargeable with black suicide^ 
for God's prior law was '■'•Man, love thyself. ''^ So that these highest speci- 
mens of supposed virtues, must, on the scheme of non-futurity, be pro- 
nounced vicious. 

177-188. Since virtueh recompense, &c. : That is, if there be no hereafter. 
It is an inexplicable mystery that virtue is not rewarded here ; also, that a 
man should be commanded by his Creator to be virtuous; and that he 



NIGHT VII. 303 

If man dies wholly, well may we demand, 

Why is man suffered to be good in vain ? 

Why to be good in vain, is man enjoin'd ? 180 

Why to be good in vain, is man betray'd ? 

Betray'd by traitors lodged in his own breast. 

By sweet complacencies from virtue felt ? 

Why whispers nature hes on virtue's part ? 

Or if blind instinct (which assumes the name 185 

Of sacred conscience) plays the fool in man, 

Why reason made accomplice in the cheat ? 

Why are the wisest loudest in her praise ? 

Can man by reason's beam be lead astray ? 

Or, at his peril, imitate his God? 190 

Since virtue sometimes ruins us on earth, 

Or both are true, or man sm-vives the gi-ave. 

Or man survives the grave, or own, Lorenzo, 
Thy boast supreme, a wild absurdity. 

Dauntless thy spirit ; cowards are thy scorn. 195 

Grant man immortal, and thy scorn is just. 
The man immortal, rationally brave. 
Dares rush on death — because he cannot die. 
But if man loses all, when hfe is lost, 

should be so constituted as to experience self- approbation and delight in 
virtuous action and hope o.f future reward. 

189-90. Can man^ k,c. : That is, can reason, which coincides with those 
workings of our moral instincts, mislead and cheat us ; and further, can we 
imitate God only at the peril to our happiness, since virtue sometimes ruins us 
on earth (191) — and he then adds, or both are true, that is, either both of the 
propositions implied in these questions are true ; in other words, either our 
reason misleads us, and we peril our happiness by obeying and imitating 
God, or we shall live hereafter (192), and it will then appear that reason in 
prompting us to virtue did not err, and that in imitating God we were not 
periling, but making sure, our happiness. 

193. Or man, &c. : Either man, &c. 

194. Boast supreme : Of being above the fear of death. 

196. Scorn (of cowards) ; scorn of those who are afraid to die. 



304 THE COMPLAINT, 

He lives a coward, or a fool expii*es. 200 

A daring infidel (and such there are, 

From pride, example, lucre, rage, revenge, 

Or pure heroical defect of thought,) 

Of all earth's madmen, most deserves a chain. 

When to the grave we follow the renown'd 205 

For valom-, ^drtue, science, all we love, 
And all we praise ; for worth, whose noon-tide beam, 
Enabhng us to think in higher style, 
Mends our ideas of ethereal pow'rs ; 

Dream we, that lustre of the moral world 210 

Goes out in stench, and rottenness the close ? 
Why was he wise to know, and warm to praise, 
And strenuous to transcribe, in human life, 
The Mind Ahnighty ? Could it be, that fate, 
Just when the lineaments began to shine, 215 

And dawn, the Deity should snatch the draught, 
With night eternal blot it out, and give 
The skies alarm, lest angels too might die ? 

If human souls, why not angehc too 
Extinguish'd ? and a solitary God, 220 

O'er ghastly ruin, frowning fi-om his throne ? 
Shall we this moment gaze on God ui man ? 
The next, lose man for ever in the dust ? 
From dust we disengage, or man mistakes ; 
And there, where least his judgment feai-s a flaw. 225 

Wisdom and worth how boldly he commends ! 

200. When Caesar had reached his highest elevation at Rome, and was 
urged by his friends to surround his person with a guard, for the sake of 
safety, he refused, and justified himself by saying, '' It is better to die once, 
than to live always in fear of death." 

207. For worth : (when we follow the renowned) for worth. The argu- 
ment on this point is strongly stated 210-218. 

219.. Why not angelic^ &c. : The argument is carried higher. The perpetual 
existence of angels, which is not denied, gives ground to infer the same 
event of human minds, being constituted in many respects alike. 

224. Disengage (ourselves) . 



KIGHT VII. 305 

Wisdom and worth are sacred names ; revered, 

Where not embraced ; applauded ! deified ! 

W^hy not compassion'd too ? If spirits die, 

Both are calamities ; inflicted both 230 

228. Where: (even) where. 

230. Botn: Wisdom and worth. The argument is, that these are calami- 
ties, because they fit us to discover more clearly the miseries of life, and to 
feel more acutely the want of a suitable recompense, in this life, of virtuous 
conduct. Hence, if there be no future life, weakness and vice have these 
advantages above wisdom and virtue, and may be regarded as the refuge of 
mankind. 

But (238) Lorenzo objects that virtue has joys of its own, which should be 
regarded as a sufficient recompense and motive. (243) Virtueh self-reward. 
Our author replies, that there is a fierce contest between virtue and vice ; 
and that we need a stronger motive, a higher prize of virtue, than the con*- 
placency felt in its emotions. Nothing less moving than the everlasting 
rewards of Christianity will be found a sufficient encouragement of virtue 
to preserve its existence on earth. 

Lord Shaftesbury and others have objected to Christianity on account of 
its holding forth the doctrine of a reward to virtue in a future state, that it 
is a mercenary system. The objection is so well answered by Andrew 
Fuller, who presents such clear and important views on this whole subject 
that we cannot forbear to copy the following observations : 

*' Every man may be considered either singly or connectedly ; either as a 
being by himself, or as a link in a certain chain of beings. Under one or 
other of these views every man considers himself, while pursuing his own 
interest. If the former, this is to make himself the ultimate end of his 
actions, and to love all other beings, created or uncreated, only as they sub- 
serve his interest or his pleasure : this is private self-love : this is mean and 
mercenary, and what we commonly understand by the term selfishness. 
But, if the latter, there is nothing mean or selfish in it. He who seeks his 
own well-being in connexion with the general good seeks it as he ought to 
do. No man is required directly to oppose his own welfare, though, in some 
instances, he may be required to sacrifice it for the general good. Neither 
is it necessary that he should be indifferent to it. Reason, as well as Scrip- 
ture, requires us to love ourselves as well as our neighbor. To this may be 
added, every man is not only a link in the chain of intelligent beings, and so 
deserving of some regard from himself, as well as from others, but every 
man's person, family, and connexions, and still more the concerns of his soul, 
are, as it were, his own vineyard, over the interests of which it is his pecu- 
liar province to exercise a watchful care. Only let the care of himself and 



306 THE COMPLAINT. 

To make us but more wretched. Wisdom's eye 

Acute, for what ? To spy more miseries ; 

And worth, so recompensed, new-points then- stings. 

Or man sm-mounts the grave, or gain is loss, 

And worth exalted, humbles us the more. 235 

Thou wilt not patronize a scheme that makes 

Weakness and vice the refuge of mankind. 

' Has ^-ii-tue, then, no joys V — Yes, joys dear bought. 
Talk ne'er so long, in this imperfect state, 
Virtue and vice are at eternal war. 240 

Virtue's a combat ; and who fights for nought ? 
Or for precarious, or for small rewai-d ? 
Who vu-tue's self-reward so loud resound, 
Would take degTees angehc here below. 

And \irtue, while they comjDliment, betray, 245 

By feeble motives, and unfaithful guards. 
The crown, th' unfading crown, her soul inspires : 
'Tis that, and that alone, can countervail 
The body's treach'ries, and the world's assaults : 
On earth's poor pay oui- famish'd vhtue dies. 250 

his immediate connexions be in subserviency to the general good, and there 
is nothing mercenary in it." 

" I need not multiply arguments to prove that the doctrine of rewards does 
not necessarily tend to encourage a mercenary spirit, or that it is consistent 
with the disinterested love of virtue. Lord Shaftesbury himself has ac- 
knowledged this : ' if by the hope of reward,' he says, ' be understood the 
love and desire of virtuous enjoyment, or of the very practice or exercise of 
virtue in another life, the expectation or hope of this kind is so far from 
being derogatory to virtue, that it is an evidence of our loving it the more 
sincerely, and for its own sake.' This single concession contains an answer 
to all that his lordship has advanced on the subject : for the rewards pro- 
mised in the gospel are all exactly of the description which he mentions. It 
is true they are often represented under the images of earthly things ; but 
this does not prove that, in themselves, they are not pure and spiritual. 
The sum of heavenly enjoyments consists in a holy likeness to God, and in 
the eternal enjoyment of his favour. No man can truly desire the favour of 
God as his chief good without a proportionate esteem of his character, 
and that for its own excellency, and this is a disinterested affection to 
virtue." 



NIGHT VII. 



SOY 



Truth incontestable ! in spite of all 

A Bayle has preach' d, or a Voltaii-e beheved. 

252. Bayle — Voltaire : Two very eminent French sceptics and writers. 
The most celebrated work of the former is his Critical Dictionary in four 
foHo volumes. Of him, Voltaire says, that " he is the first of logicians and 
sceptics. His greatest enemies must confess that there is not a line in his 
works which contains an open aspersion of Christianity : but his warmest 
apologists must acknowledge that there is not a page in his controversial 
writings, which does not lead the reader to doubt and often to scepticism." 
James Douglas has in substance observed farther, that the academic scepti- 
cism which the genius of Bayle revived, and made populeir in modern times, 
is fast passing away, if not altogether extinct : nor is it likely ever to be 
restored, by any train of favouring circumstances. JMen have discovered 
the radical absurdity of our seeking, for the avowed purpose of never find- 
ing ; of perpetually reasoning, in order never to come to any valuable result. 
Doubt is but the first step of ignorance towards inquiry ; and inquiry, 
honestly and patiently pursued, leads to truth, knowledge, certainty. Bayle 
died at Rotterdam in 1706. 

Voltaire died in 1778, having passed the last thirty years of his long life at 
Ferney, near Geneva, in Switzerland. His death-bed is described as a 
scene of unutterable remorse and horror. He was a most lively, talented, 
sophistical, and voluminous writer, and wrote on almost every subject ; he 
W8LS also a most subtile and remcorous opponent to Christianity, and pre- 
dicted, as the result of his infidel writings, that Christianity would soon fall 
in ruins. He made a sad mistake. The opposition has only revealed its 
superior strength, purity, and glory. The last fifty years of Voltaire's life 
were unweariedly and most ingeniously devoted to the work of " crushing 
the wretch," as he blasphemously denominated the Lord Jesus : and in it 
he enlisted many associates, among others D'Alembert, Diderot, and Frede- 
rick II. of Prussia. The publications issued by them deluged Europe with 
the most irreligious and demoralizing doctrines ; the efiects of which have 
not yet passed away, 

" Lausanne ! and Ferney ! ye have been the abodes 
Of names which unto you bequeathed a name ; 
Mortals, who sought and found, by dangerous roads, 
A path to perpetuity of fame : 
They were gigantic minds, and their steep aim 
Was, Titan-hke, on daring doubts to pile 
Thoughts which should call down thunder and the flame 
Of Heaven, again assaiFd, if Heaven the while 
On man and man's reseai'ch could deign do more than smile. 

The one ( Voltaire) was fii'e and fickleness, a child, 

Most mutable in -n-ishes, but in mind 

A wit as various — gay, grave, sage, or wild, — 



308 THE COMPLAINT. 



ARGUMENT FROM KNOWLEDGE AND LOVE. 

In man, tlie more we dive, the more we see 
Heav'n's signet stamping an immortal make. 
Dive to tlie bottom of his soul, the base 255 

Sustaining all, what find vre ? Knowledge, love : 
As light and heat essential to the sun, 
These to the soul. And why, if souls expire ? 
How httle lovely here ? How httle known ? 
Small knowledge we dig up with endless toil ; 260 

Historian, bard, philosopher comhined ; 
He multiplied himself among mankiad. 
The Proteus of their talent : but Ms OTvn 
Breathed most in ridicule,— which, as the -vrind, 
Blew Avhere it listed, laying all things prone, — 
Now to overthrow a fool, and now to shake a throne. 

The other, {GitT^on) deep and slow, exhausting thought, 

And hiving wisdom with each studious year, 

In meditation dwelt, with learning wrought, 

And shaped his weapon with an edge severe, 

Sapping a solemn creed with solemn sneer : 

The lord of irony, that master spell, 

Which stung his foes," &,c.~CMlde HaroM, Canto III. 

As bearing upon the present subject, the doctrines of the infidel publica- 
tions referred to were, that we cannot discern any difference between virtue 
and vice : that it is absurd to hold the soul to be a spiritual being ; that the 
immortality of the soul, so far from its stimulating man to the practice of 
virtue, is nothing but a barbarous, desperate, fatal tenet, and contrary to all 
legislation ; that all ideas of justice and injustice, of virtue and vice, of glory 
and infamy, are purely arbitrary, and dependent on custom. 

253. Another argument here commences. Future life is inferred from the 
knowledge and love which our author regards as fundamental properties of 
the soul — the base sustaining all — the basis of all. But these angel capacities 
of man are not filled on earth, vi^hile the brutal appetites have satiety : the 
obiects of love and of knowledge must be boundless to gratify our angel ap- 
petites ; and hence we may anticipate another and wider state of being, 
of action, and enjoyment. For (277) it is God's plan, in all nature, to suit 
objects, powers, and appetites to one another — where appetites are implant- 
ed, suitable objects are provided. We have no right to suppose that man 
alone is an exception, with respect to this universal law of divine provi- 
dence. 



NIGHT VII. 309 

And love imfeign'd may purchase perfect hate. 

Why starved, on earth, our angel appetites. 

While brutal are indulged their fulsome fill ? 

Were, then, capacities divine conferred. 

As a mock diadem, in savage sport, 265 

Rank insult of our pompous poverty, 

Which reaps but pain from seeming claims so fair ? 

In future age hes no redress ? And shuts 

Eternity the door on our complaint ? 

If so, for what strange ends were mortals made ! 270 

The worst to wallow, and the best to weep : 

The man who merits most, must most complain. 

Can we conceive a disregard in Heav'n, 

What the worst perpetrate, or best endure ? 

This cannot be. To love, and know, in man 275 

Is boundless appetite, and boundless pow'r ; 
And these demonstrate boundless objects too. 
Objects, pow'rs, appetites, Heav'n suits in all ; 
Nor, nature through, e'er violates this sweet 
Eternal concord on her tuneful string. 

Is man the sole exception from her laws ? 280 

Eternity struck off from human hope, 
(I speak with truth, but veneration too) 
Man is a monster, the reproach of Heav'n, 
A stain, a dark impenetrable cloud 

On nature's beauteous aspect; and deforms, 285 

(Amazing blot !) deforms her with her lord. 
If such is man's allotment, what is Heav'n ? 
Or own the soul immortal, or blaspheme. 

ARGUMENT FROM THE ORDER OF CREATION. 

Or own the soul immortal, or invert 
All order. Go, mock-majesty ! go, man ! 290 

274. What : {In respect to) what, &c. 
288-9. Or own : Either own. 



310 THE C0MPLA.1NT. 

And bow to thy supenoi-s of the stall ; 

Through ev'iy scene of sense superior far : 

They graze the tuif untill'd ; they diink the stream 

TJnbrew'd, and ever full, and unimbitter'd 

With doubts, fears, fruitless hopes, regrets, despairs, 295 

Mankind's pecuhar ! Reason's precious dow'r ! 

'No foreign clime they ransack for their robes ; 

Nor brothers cite to the litigious bar ; 

Their good is good entire, unmix'd, unmarr'd ; 

They find a paradise in every field, 300 

On boughs forbidden where no curses hang : 

Their ill no more than strikes the sense ; unstretcht 

By previous dread, or murmur in the rear : 

"When the woi-st comes, it comes unfear'd ; one stroke 

Begins and ends their wo : they die but once ; 305 

Blest, incommunicable privilege ! for which 

Proud man, who rules the globe, and reads the stars, 

Philosopher, or hero, sighs in vain. 

Account for this prerogative in brutes. 
No day, no glimpse of day, to solve the knot, 310 

But what beams on it from eternity. 
O sole, and sweet solution ! That unties 
The difficult, and softens the severe ; 
The cloud on nature's beauteous face dispels ; 
Restores bright order ; casts the brute beneath ; 315 

And re-enthrones us in supremacy 
Of joy, e'en here : admit immortal life, 

291. Superiors of the stall : The argument here is, that if the present is the 
only state of being, the brutes are our superiors in respect to freedom from 
pain, fear, and anxiety ; and in respect to enjoyment. This is to be regarded 
as an absurdity; for it inverts all proper ideas of order to suppose that beings 
of vastly inferior pow^ers should be intended for greater enjoyment than 
man. But there is no such absurdity, if u'e allov\^ man to expand his povi^ers 
and extend his enjoyments in a nobler state of being. 

296. Mankind's peculiar : His exclusive inheritance. 

302. Unstretcht: Their ill is not stretched, or increased, by previous 
dread, &c. 



NIGHT VII. 311 

And virtue is knight-erra.ntiy no more ; 

Each virtue brings in hand a golden dow'r, 

Far richer in reversion : hope exults; 320 

And though much bitter in our cup is thrown, 

Predominates, and gives the taste of heav'n. 

O wherefore is the Deity so kind ? 

Astonishing beyond astonishment ! 

Heav'n om' reward — for heav'n enjoy'd below. 325 

ARGUMENT FROM AMBITION. 

Still unsubdued thy stubborn heart ? — For there 
The traitor lurks who doubts the truth I sing. 
Reason is guiltless ! will alone rebels. 
What, in that stubborn heart, if I should find 
New unexpected witnesses against thee ? 330 

Ambition, pleasure, and the love of gain ! 
Canst thou suspect that these, which make the soul 
The slave of earth, should own her heir of heav'n 2 
Canst thou suspect what makes us disbelieve 
Our immortality, should prove it sure ? 335 

First, then, ambition summon to the bar. 
Ambition's shame, extravagance, disgust, 
And inextinguishable natm-e, speak. 
Each much deposes ; hear them in their turn. 

Thy soul, how passionately fond of fame! 340 

How anxious that fond passion to conceal ! 
We blush, detected in designs on praise. 
Though for best deeds, and from the best of men. 
And why ? Because immortal. Art divine 
Has made the body tutor to the soul ; 345 

Heav'n kindly gives our blood a moral flow ; 

320. In reversion : In future experience. 

342. We blush, &c. : The first point of this argunnent is that ambition is 
ashamed to solicit praise from man, as an ultimate object, being conscious of 
a higher tribunal where praise or blame is awarded. 

346. A moral flaw: The flow of blood to the glowing cheek is made an 
index of the moral feelings. 



312 THE COMPLAINT. 

Bids it ascend the glowing cheek, and there 

Upbraid that httle heart's inglorious aim, 

Which stoops to court a character from man ; 

While o'er us, in tremendous judgment sit 350 

Far more than man, with endless praise and blame. 

Ambition's boundless appetite out-speaks 
The verdict of its shame. When souls take fire 
At high presumptions of their own desert. 
One age is poor applause ; the mighty shout, 355 

The thunder by the hving few begun, 
Late time must echo ; worlds unborn resound. 
We -v^dsh om- names eternally to hve : 
Wild dream ! which ne'er had haunted human thought, 
Had not our natures been eternal too. 360 

Instinct points out an int'rest in hereafter ; 
But om* blind reason sees not where it lies ; 
Or seeing, gives the substance for the shade. 

Fame is the shade of immortality, 
And in itself a shadow. Soon as caught, 365 

Contemn'd ; it shrinks to nothing in the gi'asp. 
Consult th' ambitious, 'tis ambition's cure. 
* And is this all ?' cried Caesar, at his height, 
Disgusted. This third proof ambition brings 
Of immortality. The fii'st in fame, 3*70 

Observe him near, your envy will abate : 
Shamed at the disproportion vast between 
The passion and the purchase, he will sigh 
At such success, and blush at his renown. 
And why ? Because far richer prize invites 375 

His heart ; far more illustrious glory calls : 

352. The second point of this argument is the boundless field over which 
ambition instinctively desires to expatiate; the field of immortality. 

364. The next point is the disgust felt with the highest rewards of am- 
bition on earth. Earthly fame is discovered to be a shadow^ while it is the 
shade of immortality^ that is, a shadow produced by the glorious splendour of 
immortality. In the absence of all luminous bodies there can be no shade. 
It is immortal glory that must have originated the shadowy fame of earth. 



NIGITT VII. 313 

It calls in whisptre, yet the deafest hear. 

And can ambition a fourth proof supply ? 
It can, and stronger than the former three ; 
Yet quite o'erlook'd by some reputed wise. 380 

Though disappointments in ambition pain, 
And though success disgusts, yet still, Lorenzo, 
In vain we strive to pluck it from om' hearts ; 
By nature planted for the noblest ends. 

Absm-d the famed advice to Pyrrhus giv'n, 385 

More praised than ponder'd ; specious, but unsound : 
Sooner that hero's sword the world had quell'd, 
Than reason his ambition. Man must soar : 
An obstinate activity within, 

An unsuppressive spring, will toss him up, 390 

In spite of fortune's load. Not king's alone, 
Each villager has his ambition too ; 
No sultan prouder than his fetter'd slave : 

383. In vain we strive^ &c. : The inextinguishable nature of ambition is the 
fourth point of this argument. 

385. Advice to Pyrrhus givhi^ &c. : Our author probably alludes to the 
following account which is given by Plutarch, here considerably abridged. 
Pyrrhus was preparing to invade Italy. His faithful counsellor, Cineas, said 
to him, " If it please heaven that we conquer the Romans, who have the 
command of many warlike nations, what use shall we make of our victory ?" 
Pyrrhus answered, " There will then be no town in any country that will 
dare oppose us." " But," said Cineas, " aft-er we have conquered Italy 
what next ?" Pyrrhus, not perceiving his drift, replied, " We will take 
Sicily." Cineas then asked, "Shall that conclude otir conquests'?" "By 
no means," answered the other; "who then can forbear Lybia, and Car- 
thage, and Macedonia, and Greece." Cineas rejoined, " When all this is 
done, what are we to do then ?" " Why, then, my friend," said Pyrrhus, 
laughing, " we will take our ease and drink and be merry." Cineas having 
brought him thus far replied, '• And what hinders us from drinking and tak- 
ing our ease now, when we have already these things in our hands, at which 
we propose to arrive through seas of blood, through infinite toils, and dan- 
gers and calamities, which we must both cause and suffer ?" This conver- 
sation gave pain to the ambitious general, but produced no reformation. He 
saw that he was giving up certain happiness, but was not able to forego the 
objects of hope that llattered his desires. 
14 



314 THE COMPLAINT. 

Slaves build their little Babylons of straw, 

Echo the proud Assyrian in their hearts, 395 

And cry, ' Behold the wonders of my might !' 

And why ? Because immortal as their lord : 

And souls immortal must for ever heave 

At sometliing great ; the glitter, or the gold ; 

The praise of mortals, or the praise of Heav'n. 400 

Nor absolutely vain is human praise. 
When human is supported by divdne. 
I'll introduce Lorenzo to himself : 
Pleasure and pride (bad masters !) share our hearts. 
As love of pleasure is ordain'd to guard 405 

And feed our bodies, and extend our race ; 
The love of praise is planted to protect 
And propagate the glories of the mind. 
What is it, but the love of praise, insphes. 
Matures, refines, embelhshes, exalts, 410 

Earth's happiness ? From that the dehcate. 
The grand, the marvellous, of civil life. 
Want and convenience, under-workers, lay 
The basis, on which love of glory builds. 
Nor is thy life, O virtue ! less in debt 415 

To praise, thy secret stimulating fiiend. 
Were man not proud, what merit should we miss ! 
Pride made the virtues of the Pagan world. 

396. Dan. 14 : 30. " The king spake and said. Ts not this great Babylon 
that I have built for the honour of the kingdom, by the might of my 
power, and for the honour of my majesty ?" 

401. The uses of the love of praise are here exhibited. On this point may 
be consulted with great advantage the fourth of Foster's Essays, Letter IX. 
He shows its uses : but more particularly its enormous and fatal abuses ; 
and gives the Christian views on this point in contrast with those too com- 
monly introduced into polite literature. Reference may also be made to 
Boyd's Eclectic Moral Philosophy, pp. 67—69. 

418. Seasons right : Miikes right feelings and conduct pleasant. The 
author shows how praise may be made auxiliary to virtue. But it should be 
considered that he who loves the praise of man more than that of God is 
destitute of true virtue — that which the Bible regards as true. 



NIGHT VII. 315 

Praise is tlie salt that seasons ri^ht to man, 

And whets his appetite for moral good. 420 

Thirst of applause is virtue's second guard ; 

Reason her first ; but reason wants an aid : 

Our private reason is a flatterer ; 

Thirst of applause calls public judgment in 

To poise our own, to keep an even scale, 425 

And give endanger'd virtue fairer play. 

ARGUMENT FROM THE MORAL SENSE. 

Here a fifth proof arises, stronger still : 
Why tliis so nice construction of our hearts ? 
These dehcate moralities of sense ; 

This constitutional reserve of aid 430 

To succour virtue, when our reason fails ; 
If virtue, kept alive by cai*e and toil, 
And, oft, the mark of injuries on earth, 
When labour'd to maturity (its bill 

Of disciplines and pains unpaid,) must die? 435 

Why freighted rich to dash against a rock ? 
Were man to perish when most fit to five, 
O how misspent were all these stratagems. 
By skill divine inwoven in our frame ! 

Where are Heav'n's holiness and mercy fled ? 440 

Laughs Heav'n, at once, at virtue and at man ? 
If not why that discouraged, this destroy'd ? 

ARGUMENT FROM AVARICE. 

Thus fai- ambition. What says avarice ? 
This her chief maxim, which has long been thine : 
' The wise and wealthy are the same.' I grant it. 445 

To store up treasure, with incessant toil, 
This is man's province, this his highest praise ; 
To this great end keen instinct stings him on. 

446. Treasure : Here used in its largest sense. 



316 THE COMPLAINT. 

To guide that instinct, reason ! is thy charge ; 

'Tis thine to tell us where true treasm-e hes : 450 

But, reason failing to discharge her trust, 

Or to the deaf discharging it in vain, 

A blunder follows ; and bhnd industry, 

Gall'd by the spur, but stranger to the course, 

(The course where stakes of more than gold are won) 455 

O'erloading with the cares of distant age, 

The jaded spuits of the present hour, 

Pro\ddes for an eternity below. 

' Thou shalt not covet,' is a wise command ; 
But bounded to the wealth the sun sui'veys : 460 

Look farther, the command stands quite revei-sed, 
And av'rice is a virtue most divine. 
Is faith a refuge for our happiness ? 
Most sure. And is it not for reason too ? 
Nothing this world unriddles, but the next. 465 

WTicnce inextinguishable thirst of gain ? 
From inextinguishable hfe in man. 
Man, if not meant, by worth, to reach the skies, 
Had wanted wing to fly so far in guilt. 

Sour grapes, I grant, ambition, avarice : 470 

Yet still their root is immortality. 
These its wild gi'owths so bitter, and so base, 
(Pain, and reproach I) religion can reclaim, 
Eefine, exalt, throw down their pois'nous lee, 
And make them sparkle in the bowl of bhss. 475 

ARGUMENT FROM PLEASURE. 

See, the third "fitness laughs at bhss remote, 
And falsely promises an Eden here : 

470. Sour grapes : Ambition and avarice are described by this expression 
because their proper objects are beyond our reach at present, in allusion to 
the fable. Yet the connexion seems to give another meaning: the objects 
of ambition and avarice in the present life are unsatisfying, inadequate, disa- 
greeable, sometimes painful. 



NIGHT VII. ' 317 

Truth she shall speak for once, though prone to lie, 

A common cheat, and Pleasure is her name. 

To pleasure never was Lorenzo deaf; 480 

Then hear her now, now first thy real friend. 

Since nature made us not more fond than proud 
Of happiness (whence hypocrites in joy ! 
Makers of mirth ! ai'tificers of smiles !) 

Why should the joy most poignant sense affords 485 

Burn us with blushes, and rebuke our pride ? — 
Those heav'n-born blushes tell us man descends, 
E'en in the zenith of his earthly bliss : 
Should reason take her infidel repose, 

This honest instinct speaks our lineage high ; 490 

This instinct calls on darkness to conceal 
Our rapturous relation to the stalls. 
Our glory covei-s us with noble shame, 
And he that's unconfounded is unmann'd. 
The man that blushes is not quite a brute. 495 

Thus far with thee, Lorenzo, will I close : 
Pleasure is good, and man for pleasure made ; 
But pleasure full of glory, as of joy ; 
Pleasure which neither blushes nor expires. 

PRECEDING ARGUMENTS SUMMED UP. 

The witnesses are heard ; the cause is o'er ; 500 

Let conscience file the sentence in her court. 
Dearer than deeds that half a realm convey. 
Thus, seal'd by truth, th' authentic record runs : 

' Know all ; know, infidels, — unapt to know ! 
'Tis immortality your nature solves ; 505 

'Tis immortahty deciphei-s man. 
And opens all the myst'ries of his make. 
Without it, half his instincts are a riddle, 
Without it, all his virtues are a dream. 

485. Poignant sense : Acute sensibility. 
492. Stalls : Occupants of the stalls, cattle. 



318 THE COMPLAINT. 

His veiy crimes attest his dignity ; 610 

His sateless thirst of pleasure, gold, and fame, 

Declares him born for blessing-s infinite : 

What less than infinite makes unabsiird 

Passions, which all on earth but more inflames ? 

Fierce passions, so mismeasured to this scene, 515 

Stretch'd out, hke eagles' wing's, beyond our nest, 

Far, fai- beyond the worth of all below, 

For earth too large, presage a nobler flight, 

And evidence our title to the skies.' 

THE GRANDEUR, AND TRUE PURPOSE OF THE PASSIONS. 

Ye gentle theologues, of calmer kind ! 520 

Whose constitution dictates to your pen ; 
Who, cold youi-selves, think ardour comes from hell ! 
Think not our passions from corruption sprung. 
Though to coiTuption now they lend their wings ; 
That is their mistress, not their mother. A.U 525 

(And justly) reason deem divine : I see, 
I feel a gTandeur in the passions too. 
Which speaks their high descent, and glorious end ; 
WTiich speaks them rays of an eternal fire. 
In Paradise itself they burnt as strong, 530 

Ere Adam fell ; though wiser in their aim. 
Like the proud Eastern, struck by Providence, 
What though our passions are run mad, and stoop, 
With low terrestrial appetite, to gaze 

On trash, on toys, dethroned from high desire ? 535 

Yet still, through their disg]-ace, no feeble ray 
Of greatness shines, and tells us whence they fell : 
But these (like that Ml'n monarch when reclaim'd) 

515. Mismeasured : Ill-proportioned. 

520. Theologues: Theologians — divines. 

532. The proud Eastei-n: Nebuchadnezzar, whose history the prophet 
Daniel so beautifully and faithfully writes. The incidents here referred to 
are narrated in the book of Daniel, iv. 28-37. 



NIGHT VII. 319 

Wten reason moderates the rein aright, 

Shall re-ascend, remount theii* former sphere, 540 

Where once they soar'd illustrious ; ere seduced 

By wanton Eve's debauch, to stroll on earth, 

And set the sublunary world on fii-e. 

But grant their frenzy lasts ; then* frenzy fails 
To disappoint one pro\ddentia] end, 545 

For which heav'n blew up ardour in om- hearts : 
Were reason silent, boundless passion speaks 
A futm'e scene of boundless objects too. 
And brings glad tidings of eternal day. 

Eternal day ! 'Tis that enhghtens all ; 550 

And all, by that enhghten'd, proves it sure. 
Consider man as an immortal being, 
Intelligible all ; and all is great ; 
A ciystaUine transparency prevails, 

And strikes full lustre through the human sphere ; 555 

Consider man as mortal, all is dark 
And wretched ; reason weeps at the survey. 

THE stoic's disbelief OF IMMORTALITY CONSIDERED. 

The learn'd Lorenzo cries, ' And let her weep, 
Weak, modern reason : ancient tunes were wise. 
Authority, that venerable guide, 560 

Stands on my part ; the famed Athenian porch 
(And who for wisdom so renown'd as they ?) 
Denied this immortahty to man.' 
I grant it ; but affirm, they proved it too. 
A riddle, this ? — Have patience ; I'll explain. 565 

What noble vanities, what moral flights, 
Glitt'ring through their romantic wisdom's page, 

56 i. Famed Athenicm porch : The place of philosophical instruction is here 
put for the instructors who made use of it. It bore the specific name of 
PcEcih Stoa^ or painted porch^ because it was adorned with some fine paint- 
ings. It was the most famous porch in Athens, and therefore called by way 
of eminence the porch. Hence the followers of Zeno. who selected this place 
for his school, are called Stoics, or the men of the porch. 



320 THE COMPLAINT. 

Make its, at once, despise them, and admire ! 

Fable is flat to these high-season'd sires ; 

They leave th' extravagance of song below. 670 

* Flesh shall not feel ; or, feeling, shall enjoy 

The dagger or the rack ; to them, alike 

A bed of roses, or the burning buU.' 

570. They leave, &c. : They are more extravagant in their opinions than 
songs are in their exaggerations. Among their opinions these may be cited: 
— " Since those things only are truly good which are becoming and virtuous, 
and virtue, whicft is seated in the mind, is alone sufficient for happiness, ex- 
ternal things contribute nothing towards happiness, and, therefore, are not in 
themselves good. The wise man will only value riches, honour, beauty, 
and other external enjoyments, as means and instruments of virtue ; for, in 
every condition, he is happy in the possession of a mind accommodated to 
nature. Pain, which does not belong to the mand, is no evil. The wise man 
will be happy in the midst of torture. .All external things are indifferent, since 
they cannot affect the happiness of man." All the extravagant notions 
which are to be found in their writings on this subject may be referred to 
their general principle of the entire sufficiency of virtue to happiness, and 
the consequent indifference of all external circumstances. They held that 
in proportion as we approach a state of apathy we advance towards perfec- 
tion. 

573. Burning bull : A brazen bull constructed for an instrument of tor- 
ture, by Perillus. an ingenious artist, and presented to Phalaris, tyrant of 
Agrigentum. The brazen image which he fabricated was hollow, and had 
an opening, or door, in the upper part of the back, through which the victim 
of the tyrant's cruelty was introduced into the body of the bull; a-nd a hot 
fire being kindled beneath it, he was slowly roasted alive, while the cry of 
the sufferer, as it came forth from the mouth of the bull, resembled the roar- 
ing of a living animal. Phalaris is said to have tried the experiment first 
upon the artist himself He lost his own life, too, according to Ovid, in this 
same manner, having himself been burned in the bull, and having had his 
tongue previously cut out. — Anthon. 

Dr. Thomas Brown has written excellent strictures upon the Stoical phi- 
losophy, some of which will now be quoted. 

Though all which is inconsistent with virtue is to be avoided, the plea- 
sure which is consistent with virtue is to be valued not merely as being 
that which attends virtue but as being happiness, or at least an element of 
happiness. Between mere pleasure and mere virtue there is a competition 
in short of the less with the greater; but though virtue be the greater, and 
the greater in every case in which it can be opposed to mere pleasure, plea- 
sure is stilJ good in itself and would be covetable by the virtuous in every 



NIGHT VII. 321 

In men exploding all beyond the grave, 

Strange doctrine, this ! — As doctrine, it was strange ; 5*75 

But not, as prophecy ; for such it proved, 

And, to their own amazement, was fulfill'd : 

Thev feio-n'd a firmness Christians need not feio-n. 



case in which the greater good of virtue is not inconsistent with it. Pain 
is, in Hke manner, an evil in itself, though to bear pain without a murmur, or 
without even any inward murmurs be a good, a good dependent on ourselves, 
which it is in our power to add at any moment to the mere physical ill that 
does not depend on us, and a good more valuable than the pain in itself is 
evil. 

It is indeed because pleasure and pain are not in themselves absolutely 
indifferent that man is virtuous in resisting the solicitations of the one and 
the threats of the other ; and there is thus a self-confutation in the princi- 
ples of Stoicism. We may praise indeed the magnanimity of him who 
dares to suffer every external evil which man can suffer rather than give 
his conscience one guilty remembrance ; but it is because there is evil to be 
endured that we praise him for his magnanimity in bearing the evil, and if 
there be no ill to be endured there is no magnanimity that can be called forth 
to endure it. The bed of roses differs from the burning bull not merely as a 
square differs from a circle, or as flint differs from clay, but as that which is 
physically good differs from that which is physically evil ; and if they did 
not so differ, as good and evil, there could be as little merit in consenting, 
when virtue required the sacrifice, to suffer all the bodily pain which the 
instrument of torture could inflict rather than to rest in guilty indolence on 
that luxurious couch of flowers, as there could be in the mere preference for 
any physical purpose of a circular to an angular form, or of the softness of 
clay to the hardness of flint. Moral excellence is indeed in every case pre- 
ferable to mere physical enjoyment; and there is no enjoyment worthy of 
the choice of man when virtue forbids the desire. But virtue is the supe- 
rior only, not the sole power. She has imperial sw^ay ; but her sway is im- 
perial only because there are forms of inferior good over v^'hich it is her 
glory to preside. 

With all the admiration which it is impossible for us not to feel of the 
sublime parts of the Stoical system it is still founded on a false view of our 
nature. Man is to be considered not in one light only but in many lights, in 
all of which he may be a subject of agreeable feelings and consequently of 
happiness as a series of agreeable feelings. He is a sensitive being — an 
intellectual being — a moral being — a religious being — and there are species 
of happiness that correspond with these varieties. — Philosophy of the Mind^ 
III. 548-9. 

14* 



322 THE COMPLAINT. 

The Christian truly triumph'd in the flame ; 

The Stoic saw, in double wonder lost, 580 

Wonder at them, and wonder at himself. 

To find the bold adventures of his thought 

JSTot bold, and that he strove to he in vain. 

Whence, then, those thoughts ? those tow'ring thoughts, 
that flew 
Such monstrous heights ? From instinct and from pride. 585 
The glorious instinct of a deathless soul, 
Confusedly conscious of her dignity, 
Suggested truths they could not understand. 
In lust's dominion, and in passion's storm, 
Truth's system broken, scatter'd fragments lay, 590 

As hght in chaos, ghmm'ring through the gloom : 
Smit with the pomp of lofty sentiments. 
Pleased pride proclaim'd, what reason disbeheved. 
Pride, like the Delphic priestess, with a swell. 
Raved nonsense, destined to be future sense, 595 

When life immortal in full day should shine ; 
And death's dark shadows fly the Gospel sun. 
They spoke, what nothing but immortal souls 
Could speak ; and thus the truth they question'd, prov'd. 

ENDLESS QUESTIONS UNRESOLVABLE IF MAN IS NOT IMMORTAL. 

Can then absurdities, as well as crimes, 600 

Speak man immoilal ? All things speak him so. 
Much has been urged ; and dost thou call for more ? 
Call ; and with endless questions be distrest. 
All unresolvable, if earth is all. 

'Why hfe, a moment? infinite, desire? 605 

579. Truly triumph''d^ he. : The history of Christian martyrdom abun- 
dantly justifies this statement. The martyrs, under the influence of faith in 
the scenes of a future heaven, realized.^ exemplified the theory of the Stoic, 
which on the infidel hypothesis, discarding a future life, was impracticable 
and false. 

584. Whence, then., &c. : The author's mode of accounting for the extrava- 
gant opinions before referred to, is exceedingly ingenious. 



NIGHT VII. 323 

Oui' wisli, eternity ? Our home, the gi-ave ? 

Heav'n's promise dormant hes in human hope ; 

Who wishes life immortal, proves it too. 

Why happiness pursued, though never found ? 

Man's thirst of happiness declares it is, 610 

(For nature never gravitates to nought ;) 

That thirst, unquench'd, declares it is not here. 

My Lucia, thy Clarissa, call to thought ; 

Why cordial friendship riveted so deep, 

As hearts to pierce at first, at parting, rend, 61c' 

If friend, and friendship, vanish in an hour ? 

Is not this torment in the mask of joy ? 

Why by reflection marr'd the joys of sense ? 

Why past, and future, preying on our hearts. 

And putting all our present joys to death ? 620 

Why labours reason ? Instinct w^ere as weU ; 

Instinct, far better ; what can choose, can err : 

O how infallible the thoughtless brute ! 

'Twere well his Holiness were half as sure. 

Reason with inchnation, why at war ? 625 

Why sense of guilt ? Why conscience up in arms V 

Conscience of guilt, is prophecy of pain, 
And bosom-counsel to decline the blow. 
Reason with inclination ne'er had jarr'd, 

If nothing future paid forbearance here. 630 

Thus on — these, and a thousand pleas uncall'd, 
All promise, some ensure, a second scene ; 
Which, were it doubtful, vfould be dearer far 
Than all things else most certain ; were it false, 
What truth on earth so precious as the he ? 635 

613. My Lucia: Probably the author's deceased wife. Thy Clarissa; a 
deceased friend or relation of Lorenzo. 

624. His Holiness : The arrogant title of the Pope of Rome, who claims 
infallibility. 

628. Bosom-counsel : Private, confidential admonition. 

630. Paid forbearance : Rewarded forbearance to indulge our inclinations- 

635. The doctrine of a future state, even though it were a lie, or were un- 



324 THE COMPLAINT. 

This world it gives us, let wliat will ensue 

This world it gives, in that high cordial, hope*. 

The future of the present is the soul. 

How this life groans, when sever'd from the next ! 

Poor, mutilated wretch, that disbelieves ! 640 

By dark distrust his being cut in two. 

In both parts perishes ; life void of joy, 

Sad prelude of eternity in pain ! 

THE ANGUISH AND PATHETIC COMPLAINTS OF A GOOD MAN IN 
VIEW OF ANNIHILATION. 

Couldst thou persuade me, the next life could fail 
Our ardent wishes, how should I pour out 645 

My bleeding heart in anguish, new, as deep ! 
Oh ! with what thoughts, tliy hope, and my despair, 
Abhorr'd Annihilation blasts the soul. 
And wide extends the bounds of human wo ! 
Could I believe Lorenzo's system true, 650 

111 this black channel would my ravings run. 

' Grief from the futui-e borrow'd peace, erewhile. 
The future vanish'd ! and the present pain'd ! 
Strange import of unprecedented ill ! 
Fall, how profound ! like Lucifer's, the fall ! 655 

founded, is more valuable to the present interests of society than any other 
truth. This world it gives us : That is, it makes it entirely a different thing 
to us from what it otherwise would be. 

638. The soul : That which animates, controls the present scene, and gives 
it, chiefly, its value. 

647. Thy hope^ and my despair : Abhorr'd annihilation, the object of thy 
hope and of my distrust and disbelief: or, that which could realize thy hope, 
but involve me in despair, blotting out all my hope of everlasting life. 

655. Like Luciferh^ the fall : Language borrovi^ed from Isaiah 14 : 12. 

" How art thou fallen from heaven, 
Lucifer, son of the morninff : 
How art thou fell'd to the ground, 
That didst weaken the nations !" 

Our author, by a poetic license, or by conformity to an erroneous inter- 



NIGHT VII. 325 

Unequal fate ! his fall, without his guilt ! 

From where fond hope built her pavihon high, 

The gods among, hurl'd headlong, hurl'd at once 

To night ! to nothing ! darker still than night ! 

If 'twas a di'eam, why wake me, my worst foe, 660 

Lorenzo, boastful of the name of friend ! 

for delusion ! O for eiTor still ! 

Could vengeance strike much stronger than to plant 

A thinking being in a w^orld like this, 

Not over-rich before, now beggar'd quite ; 665 

More cm-st than at the fall ? — The sun goes out ! 

The thorns shoot up ! What thorns in ev'ry thought ! 

Why sense of better ? It imbitters worse. 

Why sense ? Why hfe ? K but to sigh, then sink 

To what I was ! Twice nothing ! and much wo ! 670 

Wo from Heav'n's bounties ! Wo from what was wont 

To flatter most, high intellectual pow'rs ! 

THE ABSURDITIES OP THE SCHEME OF ANNIHILATION. 

* Thought, virtue, knowledge ! blessings, by thy scheme 
All poison'd into pains. First, knowledge, once 
My soul's ambition, now her gi-eatest di'ead. 675 

To know myself, true wisdom ? 'No, to shun 
That shocking science, parent of despair ! 

pretation applies this language to Satan. Tertullian and Gregory the Great 
understood this passage in reference to the fall of Satan ; in consequence of 
which the name Lucifer has since been applied to Satan : and this is now 
the usual signification of the word. But Dr. Henderson renders this word 
" Illustrious son of the morning " The scope and connexion show that none 
but the king of Babylon is meant. The monarch here referred to, having 
surpassed all other kings in splendour, is compared to the harbinger of day 
whose brilliancy surpasses that of the surrounding stars. Falling from 
heaven denotes a sudden political overthrow — a removal from the position 
of high and conspicuous dignity formerly occupied (Compare Rev. vi. 13, 
viii. 10) . — Kittoh Cyclopcedia. 

660. If Hwas a dream: If my belief in future existence was a dream, &a 

666. At the fall : In Eden. 



326 THE COMPLAINT. 

Avert tliy mirror : if I see, T die. 

' Know my Creator ? Climo his blest abode 
By painful speculation, pierce the \eil, 680 

Dive in his nature, read his attributes, 
And gaze in admiration — on a foe, 
Obtruding hfe, withholding happiness ! 
From the full rivers that surround his throne, 
"Not letting fall one drop of joy on man ; 685 

Man gasping for one drop, that he might cease 
To curse his birth, nor envy reptiles more ! 
Ye sable clouds ! Ye darkest shades of night ! 
Hide him, for ever hide him, from my thought, 
Once all my comfort ; source, and soul of joy! 690 

Now leagued with furies, and with thee 'gainst me. 

' Know his achievements ! Study his renown ! 
Contemplate this amazing universe, 
Dropt from his hand, with miracles replete ! 
For what ? 'Mid miracles of nobler name, 695 

To find one miracle of misery ? 
To find the being, which alone can know 
And praise his works, a blemish on his praise ? 
Through nature's ample range, in thought to stroll, 
And start at man, the single mourner there, YOO 

Breathing high hope, chain'd down to pangs and death ? 

* Knowing is suff 'ring : and shall virtue share 
The sigh of knowledge ? — Virtue shares the sigh, 
By straining up the steep of excellent, 

By battles fought, and from temptation won, 705 

What gains she, but the pang of seeing worth. 
Angelic worth, soon shuffled in the dark 
With ev'ry vice, and swept to brutal dust ? 

678. ^vert thy mirror: Turn away the mirror you hold to me : the scheme 
of annihilation. Lorenzo seems to be addressed, as he is in (691). 

703. Virtue shares the siff;h : Virtue, Hke knowledge, causes us to sigh, if 
we should be persuaded that annihilation is the true doctrine. 

704. Excellent : Excellence. 



NIGHT VII. 327 

Merit is madness ; virtue is a crime ; 

A crime to reason, if it costs us pain 710 

Unpaid. What pain, amidst a thousand more, 

To think the most abandon'd, after days 

Of triumph o'er their betters, find in death 

As soft a pillow, nor made fouler clay ! 

'Duty ! Rehgion ! These, our duty done, 715 

Imply reward. Religion is mistake. 

Duty ! There's none, but to repel the cheat. 

Ye cheats, away ! ye daughters of my pride ! 

Who feign yourselves the fav'rites of the skies : 

Ye tow'ring hopes ! abortive energies ! 720 

That toss and struggle in my lying breast, 

To scale the skies,^ and build presumptions there, 

As I were heir of an eternity. 

Vain, vain ambitions ! trouble me no more. 

Why travel far in quest of sure defeat? 725 

As bounded as my being, be my wish. 

All is inverted, wisdom is a fool. 

Sense ! take the rein ; blind passion ! drive us on ; 

And ignorance ! befriend us on om- way ; 

Ye new, but truest patrons of our peace ! 730 

Yes ; give the pulse full empire ; live the brute, 

Since as the brute we die. The sum of man, 

Of godlike man ! to revel, and to rot. 

' But not on equal terms with other brutes. 
Their revels a more poignant relish yield, 735 

And safer too ; they never poisons choose. 
Instinct, than reason, makes more wholesome meals, 
And sends all-marring murmur far away. 
For sensual life they best philosophize ; 

Theirs, that serene, the sages sought in vain : 740 

'Tis man alone expostulates with Heav'n ; 
His, all the pow'r, and all the cause, to mourn. 

709 Virtue is a crime : It is wrong to be at the pains of virtue, for the 
reason afterwards stated (710-11). 



228 THE COMPLAINT. 

Shall human eyes alone dissolve in tears ? 

And bleed, in anguish, none but human hearts ? 

The wide-stretch'd realm of intellectual wo, Y45 

Surpassing sensual far, is all om* own. 

In hfe so fatally distinguish'd, why 

Cast in one lot, confounded, lump'd, in death ? 

* Ere yet in being, was mankind in guilt ? 
Why thunder'd this peculiar clause against us, 750 

All-mortal, and all wi-etched ? — Have the skies 
Eeasons of state their subjects may not scan, 
Nor humbly reason, when they sorely sigh ? 
All-mortal, and all-wretched ! — 'Tis too much ; 
Unparallel'd in natm'e : 'tis too much, 755 

On being unrequested at thy hands, 
Omnipotent ! for I see nought but pow'r. 

' And why see that ? Why thought ? To toil and eat. 
Then make our bed in darkness, needs no thought. 
What superfluities are reas'ning souls ! 760 

Oh, give eternity ! or thought destroy ! 
But without thought our curse were half unfelt ; 
Its blunted edge would spare the throbbing heart ; 
And, therefore, 'tis bestow'd. I thank thee. Reason, 
For aiding hfe's too small calamities, 765 

And gi\^ng being to the dread of death. 
Such are thy bounties ! — Was it then too much 
For me to trespass on the brutal rights ? 
Too much for Heav'n to make one emmet more ? 
Too much for chaos to permit my mass 770 

A longer stay with essences unwrought, 
Unfashion'd, untormented into man ? 
Wretched preferment to this round of pains ! 
Wretched capacity of frenzy, thought ! 

Wretched capacity of dpng, life ! 775 

Life, thought, worth, wisdom, all (0 foul revolt !) 
Once friends to peace, gone over to the foe. 



NIGHT VII. 329 



THE HORRORS OF ANNIHILATION. 

' Death tlien has changed its nature too : death ! 
1^ Come to my bosom, thou best gift of Heav'n ! 

Best friend of man ! since man is man no more. 780 

Why in this thorny wilderness so long, 

Since there's no promised land's ambrosial bow'r, 

To pay me with its honey for my stings ? 

If needful to the selfij||| schemes of Heav'n 

To sting us sore, why raock'd our misery ? 785 

Why this so sumptuous insult o'er our heads ? 

Why this illustrious canopy display'd ? 

Why so magnificently lodged despair ? 

At stated periods, sure-returning, roll 

These glorious orbs, that mortals may compute 190 

Their length of labours, and of pains ; nor lose 

Their misery's full measure ? — Smiles with flow'i-s, 

And fruits, promiscuous, ever-teeming earth, 

That man may languish in luxurious scenes, 

And in an Eden mourns his wither'd joys ? 795 

Claim earth and skies man's admiration, due 

For such delights ? Blest animals ! too wise 

To wonder ; and too happy to complain ! 

* Our doom decreed demands a mournful scene : 
Why not a dungeon dark, for the condemn'd ? 800 

Why not the dragon's subterranean den, 
For man to howl in ? Why not his abode 
Of the same dismal colour with his fate ? 
A Thebes, a Babylon, at vast expense 

804. Thebes — Babylon : Once splendid cities in Egypt and Assyria, con- 
taining magnificent displays of human art; but now for ages lying in ruins, 
the abode of " owls and adders." 

It may here be remarked that among the stronger or more obvious proofs 
of ihe divine inspiration of the Hebrew prophets, may be named exact ful- 
filment of the predictions which they uttered concerning the fall of Babylon 
and other cities, which, at the time, seemed destined to permanence and to 
increasing glory. Thus Isaiah wrote (ch. 13 : 19-22), "and Babylon, the 



330 THE COMPLAINT. 

Of time, toil, treasure, art, for owls and addei-s, 803 

As congruous, as for man this lofty dome. 

Which prompts proud thought, and kindles high desire ; 

If, from her humble chamber in the dust. 

While proud thought swells, and high desire inflames, 

The poor worm calls us for her inmates there ; 810 

And, round us, death's inexorable hand 

Draws the dark curtain close ; undrawn no more. 

' Undi-awn no more ! — Behind the cloud of death, 
Once I beheld a sun ; a sun w^hich^lt 

That sable cloud, and turn'd it all to gold. 815 

How the grave's alter'd ! Fathomless as hell ! 
A real hell to those who dreamt of heav'n. 
Annihilation ! how it yawns before me ! 
Next moment I may drop from thought, from sense, 
The privilege of angels, and of worms, 820 

An outcast from existence ! and this spirit. 
This all-pervading, this all-conscious soul, 
This particle of energy divine. 
Which travels nature, flies from star to star. 
And visits gods, and emulates their pow'rs, 825 

For ever is exting-uish'd. Horror ! death ! 
Death of that death I fearless once sm-vey'd ! — 
When horror universal shall descend, 

glory of kingdoms, the beauty of the Chaldees' excellency, shall be as when 
God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrha. It shall never be inhabited, neither 
shall it be dwelt in from generation to generation, &c. : but wild beasts of 
the desert shall lie there ; and their houses shall be full of doleful creatures ; 
and owls shall dwell there, and satyrs shall dance there, &c , and dragons 
(serpents) in their pleasant palaces, &c.'' 

As to Thebes^ Ezekiel and Jeremiah speak of it under the name No^ 
Ezek. XXX. 14 — 16 : xxix. 14, 15. Jer. xlvi. 25. Speaking of the ruins of 
this Egyptian city, Dr. Robinson says, " It is impossible to wander among 
these scenes, and behold these hoary yet magnificent ruins without emo- 
tions of astonishment and deep solemnity. Everything around testifies of 
vastness and of utter desolation." — Bib. Researches^ i. 29. 

825. Gods : Angelic beings. 



NIGHT VII. 331 

And heav'n's dark concave urn all human race, 

On that enormous, unrefunding tomb, 830 

How just this verse ! this monumental sigh !' 



the lumber of demoUsli'd worlds, 
Deep in the rubbish of the general wreck, 
Swept ignominious to the common mass 
Of matter, never dignified with life, 835 

Here lie proud rationals ; the sons of Heav'n / 
The lords of earth L, the property of worrm '. 
Beings of yesterday, and no to-morrow ! 
Who liv''d in terror, and in pangs expired f 
All gone to rot in chaos ; or, to make 84'!> 

Their happy transit into blocks or brutes, 
Nor longer sully their Creator's name, 

Lorenzo ! hear, pause, wonder, and pronounce. 
Just is this history ? If such is man. 

Mankind's historian, though divine, might weep. 84i 

And dares Lorenzo smile ? — I know thee proud ; 
For once let pride befriend thee : pride looks pale 
At such a scene, and sighs for something more. 
Amid thy boasts, presumptions, and displays. 
And art thou then a shadow ? less than shade ? 850 

And nothing ? less than nothing ? To have been, 
And not to be, is lower than unborn. 
Art thou ambitious ? Why then make the worm 
Thine equal ? Runs thy taste of pleasure high ? 
Why patronize sure death of ev'iy joy % 855 

Charm riches ? Why choose begg'ry in the grave, 
Of ev'ry hope a bankrupt ! and for ever ? 
Ambition, pleasure, avarice, persuade thee 

829 XJrn, &c. : Enclose in an urn the dead renaains of all the human 
race. 

830. Unrefunding tomb : Not giving back its dead. 

850 A shadow ? less than shade : Shadoiv and shade are here used as syno^ 
nymous, this being evident from the next line. 



332 THE COMPLAINT. 

To make that world of gloiy, rapture, wealth, 

They lately proved thy soul's supreme desire. 860 

What ai't thou made of ? Rather how unmade ? 
Great Nature's master-appetite destroy'd ! 
Is endless life, and happiness, despised ? 
Or both wish'd, here, where neither can be found ? 
Such man's perverse eternal war with Heav'n ! 865 

Darest thou persist ? And is there nought on earth, 
But a long train of transitory forms, 
Eising, and breaking, milhons in an horn* ? 
Bubbles of a fantastic deity, blown up 

In sport, and then in cruelty destroy'd ? 8 70 

Oh ! for what crime, unmerciful Lorenzo ! 
Destroys thy scheme the whole of human race ? 
Kind is fell Lucifer, compared to thee : 
Oh ! spare this waste of being half di\ane ; 
And vindicate th' economy of Heav'n. 8*75 

Heav'n is all love ; all joy in giving joy ; 
It never had created, but to bless : 
And shall it, then, strike off the list of life, 
A being blest, or worthy so to be ? 
Heav'n starts at an annihilating God. 880 

THE SCHEME OF ANNIHILATION, A WICKED INVENTION. 

Is that, all nature starts at, thy desire ? 
Art such a clod to wish thyself all clay ? 
"What is that di-eadful wish ? — The dying groan 
Of nature, murder'd by the blackest guilt. 
What deadly poison has thy nature drank ? 885 

860. Lately proved : The discussions in Night VI. are referred to. In some 
editions, this line runs thus : " They lately proved the soul's suprenne de- 
sire." The former reading is preferable. Ambition, &c. (858) , persuade 
thee to make that world of glonj, &c., the existence of which they proved, the 
object of thy supreme desire. 

862. Master-appetite: The appetite for immortality. 

882. Art thou such, &c. 



NIGHT VII. 333 

To natui'e undebauch'd no shock so great ; 

Nature's fii'st wish is endless happiness ; 

Annihilation is an after-thought, 

A monstrous wish, unborn till vii'tuo dies. 

And, oh ! what depth of horror hes enclosed ! 890 

For non-existence no man ever wish'd, 

But, first, he wish'd the Deity destroy'd. 

If so, what words are dark enough to draw 
Thy pictui-e true ? The darkest ai'e too fair. 
Beneath what baneful planet, in what hour 895 

Of desperation, by what fury's aid, 
In what infernal posture of the soul, 
All hell invited, and all hell in joy 
At such a birth, a birth so near of kin, 

Did thy foul fancy whelp so foul a scheme 900 

Of hopes abortive, faculties half blown, 
And deities begun, reduc'd to dust ? 

There's nought, (thou say'st,) but one eternal flux 
Of feeble essences, tumultuous driven 

Through time's rough billows into night's abyss. 905 

Say, in this rapid tide of human ruin, 
Is there no rock, on which man's tossing thought 
Can rest from ten-or, dare his fate survey, 
And boldly think it something to be born ? 
Amid such hourly wrecks of being fair, 910 

Is there no central all-sustaining base, 
AU-realizing, all-connecting pow'r. 
Which, as it call'd forth aU things, can recall, 
And force destruction to refund her spoil ? 
Command the grave restore her taken prey ? 915 

Bid death's dark vale its human harvest yield, 
And earth, and ocean, pay their debt of man, 
True to the grand deposit trusted there ? 
Is there no potentate, whose outstretch'd arm, 
When rip'ning time calls forth th' appointed hour, 920 

Pluck'd from foul devastation's famish'd maw, 
Binds present, past, and future, to his throne ? 



334 THE COMPLAINT. 

His throne, how glorious, thus divinely graced. 

By germinating beings clust'ring round I 

A garland worthy the Divinity ! 925 

A throne, by Heav'n's omnipotence in smiles, 

Built (like a Pharos tow'ring in the waves) 

Amidst immense effusions of his love ! 

An ocean of communicated bliss ! 

AN ALL-PRESERVING CONTRASTED WITH AN ANNIHILATING GOD. 

An all-prolific, all-preserving God ! 930 

This were a God indeed. — And such is man. 
As here presumed : he rises from his fall. 
Think'st thou Omnipotence a naked root. 
Each blossom fah of Deity destroy'd ? 

Nothing is dead ; nay, nothing sleeps : each soul, 935 

That ever animated human clay, 
Now wakes ; is on the wing ; and where, O where. 
Will the swarm settle ? — When the trumpet's call. 
As sounding brass, collects us round Heav'n's throne 
Conglobed, we bask in everlasting day, 940 

(Paternal splendour !) and adhere forever. 
Had not the soul this outlet to the skies. 
In this vast vessel of the universe. 
How should we gasp, as in an empty void ! 

927. Pharos : A small island in the Bay of Alexandria, upon which was 
built, in the reign of Ptolemy Philadelphus, a celebrated tower, to serve as 
a light-house. This tower, built of white marble, was visible at a great dis- 
tance, and was regarded as one of the seven wonders of the world by the 
ancients. It had several stories, raised one above another, adorned with 
columns, balustradee. and galleries, of the finest marble and workmanship. 
On the top, fires were lighted in the night season, to direct sailors in the 
Bay, which was dangerous and difl^cult of access. The term Pharos is 
traced to a Greek word signifying to shine or be bright. — inthonh Class. D. 

938. Swarm : An allusion to a swarm of bees, to indicate a vast multitude. 
The allusion is continued in the next line, where the mode of collecting 
bees is referred to. 

940. Conglobed: Brought into a round mass or multitude. This is a 
favourite term of Milton. 



NIGHT VII. 335 

How in the pangs of famisli'd hope expire ! 945 

How bright my prospect shines ! how gloomy, thine I 

A trembhug world ! and a devouring God ! 

Earth, but the shambles of Omnipotence ! 

Heav'n's face all stain'd with causeless massacres 

Of countless milHons, born to feel the pang 950 

Of being lost. Lorenzo ! can it be ? 

This bids us shudder at the thoughts of hfe. 

Who would be born to such a phantom world, 

Where nought substantial, but our misery ? 

Where joy (if joy) but heightens our distress, 955 

So soon to perish, and revive no more ? 

The greater such a joy, the more it pains. 

A world, so far from great (and yet how great 

It shines to thee !) there's nothing real in it ; 

Being, a shadow ! consciousness, a di'eam ! 960 

A dream, how dreadful ! Universal blank 

Before it, and behind ! Poor man, a spark 

From non-existence struck by wrath divine ; 

Glitt'ring a moment, uor that moment sure ; 

'Midst upper, nether, and surrounding night, 965 

His sad, sure, sudden, and eternal tomb ! 
Lorenzo, dost thou feel these arguments ? 

Or is there nought but vengeance can be felt ? 

How hast thou dared the Deity dethrone ? 

How dared indict him of a world like this ? 9*70 

If such the world, creation was a crime ; 

For what is crime, but cause of misery ? 

Retract, blasphemer ! and unriddle this, 

948. Shambles : Butcher's stall or shop. 

953-4. Where nought^ &c. : These lines have been quoted by Dr. Aikin, 
as an example of Young's gloomy misrepresentation of this world. But be 
overlooked the connection in which they stand. They describe this world 
as it would be, if the scheme of annihilation, adopted by Lorenzo, were 
true. 

970. Indict him of a world^ &c. : Charge him with the crime of creating a 
world like this. 



336 THE COMPLAINT. 

Of endless arguments, above, below, 

"Without us, and within, the short result — 975 

' If man's immortal, there's a God in heav'n.' 

But wherefore such redundancy ? such waste 
Of argument ? One sets my soul at rest ! 
One obvious, and at hand, and, oh ! — at heart. 
So just the skies, Philander's hfe so pain'd, 980 

His heai't so pure ; that, or succeeding scenes 
Have palms to give, or ne'er had he been born. 

' What an old tale is this !' Lorenzo cries. 
I grant this argument is old ; but truth 

No years impair : and had not this been true, 985 

Thou never hadst despised it for its age. 
Truth is immortal as thy soul ; and fable 
As fleeting as thy joys. Be wise, nor make 
Heav'n's highest blessmg, vengeance ; O be wise ? 
Nor make a curse of immortality. 990 

THE IMPORTANCE OF A SOUL IMMORTAL 

Say, know'st thou what it is, or what thou art ? 
Know'st thou th' importance of a soul immortal ? 
Behold this midnight glory ; worlds on worlds ! 
Amazing pomp ! Redouble this amaze ; 
Ten thousand add ; and twice ten thousand more; 995 

Then weigh the whole : one soul outweighs them all ; 
And calls th' astonishing magnificence 
Of unintelligent creation poor. 
For this, believe not me ; no man beheve : 
Trust not in words, but deeds; and deeds no less 1000 

Than those of the Sui^reme ; nor his, a few ; 
Consult them all ; consulted, all proclaim 
Tliy soul's importance. Tremble at thyself; 
For whom Omnipotence has waked so long : 
Has waked, and work'd for ages ; from the birth 1005 

978. One : One argument. The justice of God in awarding to Philander, 
who passed a life of purity, yet of extreme suffering, here, some future ex- 
istence of a different character. 



NIGHT Vn. 



337 



Of nature to this unbelieving hour. 

In this small province of His vast domain, 

(All nature bow, while I pronounce His name !) 

What has God done, and not for this sole end, 

To rescue souls from death ? the soul's high price 1010 

Is wi-it in all the conduct of the skies. 

The soul's high price is the creation's key, 

Unlocks its mysteries, and naked lays 

The genuine cause of ev'ry deed divine : 

That is the chain of ages, which maintains 1015 

Their obvious correspondence, and miites 

Most distant periods in one blest design : 

That is the mighty hinge, on which have turn'd 

All revolutions, whether we regard 

The nat'ral, civil, or rehgious world ; 1020 

The former two but servants to the third : 

To that their duty done, they both expii'e ; 

Their mass new-cast, forgot their deeds renown'd ; 

And angels ask, ' Where once they shone so fair ?' 

To Hffc us from this abject, to sublime ; 1025 

This flux, to permanent ; this dark, to day ; 
. This foul, to pure ; this turbid, to serene ; 

This mean, to mighty ! — for this glorious end 
*/ Th' Almighty, rising, his long sabbath broke ! 

The world was made ; was ruined ; was restored ; 1030 

• -Laws from the skies were published ; were repeal'd ; 

1020-1. A truth of great consequence, and too little regarded by secular 
historians. Edwards' "History of Redemption" may be read as an admir- 
able commentary on these two lines. 

1025-28. In these lines adjectives are used frequently without an appro- 
priate substantive : an idiom common to poets, and not to be found fault 
with, because it is suited to make a deeper impression, and yet is not dif- 
ficult to understand. 

1029. Sabbath: Rest. 

1030. Was ruined: By the Deluge. 

1031. Laivs ivere publish^ d : On Mount Sinai. Were repeaP d : At the period 
of the death and resurrection of Christ, when the Jewish economy had ful- 

15 



338 THE COMPLAINT. 

On earth, kings, kingdoms, rose ; kings, kingdoms, fell ; 

Famed sages lighted up the pagan world ; 

Prophets from Sion darted a keen glance 

Thro' distant age; saints travell'd; martyrs bled; 1035 

By wondei-s sacred nature stood controll'd ; 

The living were translated ; dead were raised ; 

Angels, and more than angels, came from heav'n ; 

And, oh ! for this, descended lower still ? 

Gilt was hell's gloom ; astonish'd at his guest 1040 

For one short moment Lucifer adored : 

Lorenzo ! and wilt thou do less ? — For this, 

That hallow'd page, fools scoff at, was inspired, 

Of all these truths thrice-venerable code ! 

Deists ! perform your quarantine; and then 1045 

Fall prostrate ere you touch it, lest you die. 

'Not less intensely bent infernal pow'rs 
To mar, than those of light, this end to gain. 
O what a scene is here ! — Lorenzo, wake ! 
Rise to the thought; exert, expand thy soul 1050 

filled its temporary purpose, and Christianity, suited to universal adoption, 
was established. 

1037. Translated: As Enoch and Elijah. 

1038. More than angels: The Son of God. 

1040. Gilt was helPs gloom: Gilded was the gloom of the grave. The 
word hell is sometimes used in this sense ; as where it is said, " Thou wilt 
not leave my soul in hell, nor suffer thine Holy One to see corruption." 

1041. Lucifer adored : An allusion to a highly poetic passage in tb.e pro- 
phecy of Isaiah, chap. xiv. Adord^ wondered, was awed. Consult espe- 
cially verses 9, 10. Isaiah applies the language of that prophecy to Lucifer, 
the king of Babylon ; but here our author, by a bold conception, represents 
even Lucifer as paying the homage of astonishment at the entrance of so 
distinguished a being as Jesus Christ, God incarnate, into the state of the 
dead, and of the entombed. 

1045. Perform your quarantine : Purify yourselves from the infection of 
your corrupt principles. Touch it: An allusion to the ark of God which 
Uzza touched, and for the offence was instantly slain by Jehovah, 1 Chron. 
xiii. 9, 10. He had transgressed the solemn command in Numb. iv. 15: 
"Tiiey shall not touch any holy thing lest they die." 



NIGHT VII. 339 

To take the vast idea ! it denies 

All else the name of great. Two warring worlds ! 

Not Europe against Afric ; wai'ring worlds, 

Of more than mortal ! mounted on the wing ! 

On ardent wings of energy and zeal, 1055 

High-hov'ring o'er this little brand of strife ! 

This sublunary ball — But strife, for what ? 

In their own cause conflicting ? No ; in thine, 

In man's. His single int'rest blows the flame ; 

His the sole stake ; his fate the trumpet sounds, 1060 

"Which kindles war immortal. How it burns ! 

Tumultuous swarms of deities in arms ! 

Force, force opposing, till the waves run high. 

And tempest nature's universal sphere. 

Such opposites eternal, steadfast, stern, 1065 

Such foes implacable, are Good and 111 ; 

Yet man, vain man, would mediate peace between them. 

Think not this fiction : ' There was war in heav'n.' 
From heav'n's high crystal mountain, where it hung, 
Th' Almighty's outstretch'd arm took down his bow, 10 70 
And shot his indignation at the deep : 
Re-thunder'd hell, and darted all her fii'es. — 
And seems the stake of httle moment still ? 
And slumbers man, who singly caused the storm ? 
He sleeps. — And art thou shock'd at mysteries? 1075 

The greatest, thou. How dreadful to reflect, 
What ai'dour, care, and counsel, mortals cause 

1068. War in heaven: Quoted from Rev. xii, 7. The great historian of 
that war is Milton, in his Paradise Lost, As a sample of the style of his 
highly poetic narrative, take this from the First Book : 

And with ambitious atim 
Against the throne and monarchy of G-od, 
Eaised impious war in heav'n and battle proud 
Witli vain attempt. Him the Almighty Power 
Ilurl'd headlong flaming from th' ethereal sky, 
"With hideous ruin and combustion, down 
To bottomless perdition ; there to dwell 
In adamantine chains and penal fii-e, 
Who durst defy th' Omnipotent to arms. 



340 THE COMPLAINT. 

In breasts divine ! How little in tlieir own ! 

Where'er I turn, how new proofs pour upon me ? 
How happily this wondi'ous view supports 1080 

My former argument ! How strongly strikes 
Immortal life's full demonstration here ! 
"Why this exertion ? Why this strange regard 
From heav'n's Omnipotent indulged to man ? — 
Because, in man, the glorious, dreadful pow'r, 1085 

Extremely to be pain'd, or blest, for ever. 
Dm-ation gives importance ; swells the price. 
An angel, if a creature of a day. 
What would he be ? A trifle of no weight ; 

Or stand, or fall ; no matter which ; he's gone. 1090 ^ 

Because immortal, therefore is indulg'd I 

This strange i-egard of deities to dust. 
Hence, heav'n looks down on earth with all her eyes : 
Hence, the soul's mighty moment in her sight : 
Hence ev'ry soul has partisans above, 1095 

And ev'ry thought a critic in the skies : 
Hence, clay, vile clay ! has angels for its guard, 
And ev'ry guard a passion for his charge : 
Hence, from all age, the cabinet divine 
Has held high counsel o'er the fate of man. 1100 , 

ISTor have the clouds those gracious counsels hid. 
Angels undrew the curtain of the throne. 
And Providence came forth to meet mankind : 
In various modes of emphasis and awe. 

He spoke his will, and trembling nature heard : 1105 

He spoke it loud, in thunder and in storm. 
Witness, thou Sinai ! whose cloud-cover'd height, 
And shaken basis, own'd the present God : 
Witness, ye billows ! whose returning tide, 

1090. Or standi or fall : Whether he stand or fall, 

1092. Deities : The three Persons of the Deity, Father, Son, and Spirit. 

1107. Sinai: Exod. xix. 16, 18. 

1109. Billows: Exod. xiv. 7. 



NIGHT VII. 341 

Breaking the chain that fasten'd it in air, 1110 

Swept Egypt, and her menaces, to hell : 

Witness, ye flames ! th' Assyrian tyrant blew 

To sevenfold rage, as impotent, as strong : 

And thou, earth ! witness, whose expanding jaws 

Closed o'er presumption's sacrilegious sons. 1115 

Has not each element in turn subscribed 

The soul's high price, and sworn it to the wise ? 

Has not flame, ocean, ether, earthquake, strove 

To strike this truth through adamantine man ? 

If not all-adamant, Lorenzo! hear: 1120 

All is delusion ; nature is wrapt up. 

In tenfold night, from reason's keenest eye ; 

There's no consistence, meaning, plan, or end, 

In all beneath the sun, in all above, 

(As far as man can penetrate) or heav'n 1125 

Is an immense, inestimable prize ; 

Or all is nothing, or that prize is all. — 

And shall each toy be still a match for heav'n, 

And full equivalent for groans below ? 

Who would not give a trifle to prevent, 1130 

What he would give a thousand worlds to cure ? 

DIFFICULTIES OF INFIDELITY. 

Lorenzo, thou hast seen (if thine to see) 
All nature, and her God (by nature's course. 
And nature's course control'd) declare for me : 
The skies above proclaim, ' Immortal man !' 1185 

And, ' Man immortal !' all below resounds. 
The world's a system of theology. 
Read by the greatest strangers to the schools : 
If honest, learn'd ; and sages o'er a plough. 

1112. Assyrian tyrant : See Dan. iii, 19. 
1115. Sacrilegious sons : Numb. xvi. 32. 
1127. Or all, &c. : Either all, &c. 
1129. Below: In hell. 



342 THE COMPLAINT. 

Is not, Lorenzo, tlien, imposed on thee 1140 

This hard alternative ; or, to renounce 

Thy reason, and thy sense ; or, to believe ? 

What then is unbelief ? 'Tis an exploit ; 

A strenuous enterprise : to gain it, man 

Must burst through ey'ry bar of common sense, 1145 

Of common shame, magnanimously wrong. 

And what rewards the sturdy combatant ? 

His prize, repentance ; infamy, his crown. 

INFAMY OF IXFIDELITT AS TO A FUTURE LIFE. 

But wherefore infamy ? — For want of faith, 
Down the steep precipice of wrong he shdes ; 1150 

There's nothing to support him in the right. 
Faith in the future wanting, is, at least 
In embryo, ev'ry weakness, ev'ry guilt ; 
And strong temptation ripens it to birth. 

If this life's gain invdtes him to the deed, 1155 

"Why not his country sold, his father slain ? 
'Tis virtue to pm-sue our good supreme ; 

1141. Or to renounce : Either to renounce. 

1157. ^ Tis virtue, Sic. : The observations made in this connection upon 
virtue, may be compared with those offered in the early part of this Night, 
139 — 192, 238 — 250. His theory of virtue is not to our taste, though plausi- 
ble. It partakes too much of the character of an exalted, far-seeing, pru- 
dent, intellectual, and enlightened selfishness. While the pursuit of our 
supreme good is consistent with virtue, and inseparable from it, that is not the 
whole of virtue, nor its just definition. The sentiment offered (1174-5) is 
one of very questionable correctness. While virtue credits, and pays all 
due deference and regard to the rewards and punishments of the Divine gov- 
ernment, the author seems to teach that these rewards and punishments 
form the only basis of the adoration which a virtuous man pays to the Deity. 
A most extraordinary statement ! It has usually been inculcated by sound 
divines, that the perfections of the Deity are the primary grounds of adora- 
tion, love, and obedience, while the rewards and punishments have an alto- 
gether subordinate, yet very important influence. 

Neither is it true that " hopes and fears give conscience all her power." 
The man who is affected by these considerations exclusively, or even 



NIGHT VII. 343 

And his supreme, Ms only good, is here. 

Ambition, av'rice, by the \\^se disdain'd, 

Is perfect wisdom, while mankind are fools, ir60 

And think a turf, or tomb-stone, covere all : 

These find employment, and pronde for sense 

A richer pasture, and a larger range ; 

And sense by right di\ine ascends the throne, 

When virtue's prize and prospect are no more; 1165 

Virtue no more we think the will of Heav'n. 

Would Heav'n quite beggar ^ii-tue, if belov'd ? 

' Has virtue charms V — I gTant her heav'nly fair ; 
But if unportion'd, all will int'rest wed ; 

Though that our admiration, this om' choice. 1170 

The virtues grow on immortahty ; 
That root destroy'd, they wither and expire. 
A Deity behev'd, will nought avail ; 
Eewards and punishments make God ador'd, 
And hopes and feai-s give conscience all her pow'r. 11 75 

As in the dpng parent dies the child, 

chiefly, in his moral conduct if he can lay claim to virtue at all, must be 
content with the credit of a very mean and mercenary sort of virtue. He 
places his own private interest above n'^ht — above what is fit, and proper, 
and becoming in itself, and in the relations he sustains to other beings. His 
respect for God is simply equivalent to respect for himself, adoring God 
only, or chiefly, because he can make us happy or miserable, and following 
the impulse of hope and fear as the most excellent powers of his immortal 
nature. 

Neither does it seem perfectly clear to us that virtue cannot, and especially 
ought not to exist, as the author teaches, if immortality were not the future 
portion of man. Virtue is due from man to his Creator, and from man to 
his fellow, on the ground of the mutual relations which they sustain, and 
not on the ground of the precise duration of man's existence. If a man 
should exist but a hundred years, or for a shorter period, zis soon as his 
powers are sufficiently developed to make him an accountable creature, he 
is bound to love God with all his heart, and his neighbour as himself— and 
this is virtue — irrespective of the duration of his being. 

There is no doubt, however, that the sanctions of immortality serve 
greatly to assist and invigorate all moral feelings and purposes of a right 
character, and to discourage the reverse, and hence they occupy a prominent 
place on the pages of Divine Hevelation. 



344 THE COMPLAINT. 

Virtue, with immortality, expires. 

Who tells me he denies his soul immortal, 

Whate'er his boast, has told me, he's a knave. 

His duty 'tis, to love himself alone ; 1180 

Nor care, though mankind perish, if he smiles. 

"Who thinks ere long the man shall wholly die, 

Is dead aheady ; nought but brute survives. 

THE CAUSE OF INFIDELITY. 

And are there such ? — Such candidates there are 
For more than death : for utter loss of being ; 1185 

Being, the basis of the Deity ! 
Ask you the cause ? — The cause they will not tell ; 
Nor need they : Oh, the sorceries of sense ! 
They work this transformation on the soul. 
Dismount her, like the serpent at the fall, 1190 

Dismount her from her native wing (which soar'd 
Erewhile ethereal heights) and thi'ow her down, 
To Uck the dust, and crawl in such a thought. 

THE CHARACTER OF AN INFIDEL STATE. 

Is it in words to paint you ? ye fall'n ! 
Fall'n from the wings of reason, and of hope ! 1195 

Erect in stature, prone in appetite ! 

1188. OA, the sorceries of sense: An allusion to the transformation said to 
be made by Circe upon those who put themselves in her power, and which 
has been explained in a former note. In plain language it may be rendered: 
Oh the degrading deception practised, and change performed, by a too exclu- 
; ive indulgence in the gratifications of sense ! 

1190. Dismount her : Degrade the soul. In the next line the meaning of 
the verb is somewhat varied : Cause her to descend /rowi the elevation of her 
native wing. 

1196. Prone in appetite: It is mentioned of a friend of Charles L, in the 
civil war of the Parliament, that he had m-ade up his mind to take horse 
and join the royal party, but for one circumstance — that he could not recon- 
cile himself to the thought of being an hour or two less in bed than he had 
been accustomed in his quiet home ; and he therefore, after duly reflecting 



NIGHT VII. 345 

Patrons of pleasm*e, posting into pain ! 

Level's of argument, averse to sense ! 

Boasters of liberty, fast bound in chains ! 

Lords of the wide creation, and the shame ! 1200 

More senseless than th' irrationals you scorn ! 

More base than those you rule ! than those you pity, 

Far more undone ! O ye most infamous 

Of beings, from superior dignity ! 

Deepest in wo from means of boundless bliss ! 1205 

Ye curst by blessings infinite ! because 

Most highly favoured, most profoundly lost ! 

Ye motley mass of contradiction strong ! 

And are you, too, convinced, your souls fly off 

Jjo. exhalation, soft, and die in air, 1210 

From the full flood of e\idence against you ? 

In the coai'se di-udgeries and sinl^ of sense, 

Yom- souls have quite worn out the make of heav'n, 

By vice new-cast, and creatures of your o\vn : 

But though you can deform, you can't destroy ; 1215 

To cui-se, not uncreate, is all your power. 

TRUE FREE-THINKING DEFINED. 

Lorenzo, this black brotherhood renounce ; 
Renounce St. Evremont and read St. Paul. 

on the impossibility of being both a good subject and a good sleeper, con- 
tented himself with remaining to enjoy his repose Absurd as such an 
anecdote may seem, it states only what passes innumerable times through 
the silent heart of every voluptuary, in similar comparisons of the most im- 
portant duties with the most petty, base, habitual pleasures. How many more 
virtuous actions would have been performed on earth, if the performance of 
them had not been inconsistent with enjoyments as insignificant in them- 
selves as an hour of unnecessary, and perhaps hurtful slumber! — Brown^s 
Phil, of the Mind, HI. 551. 

1198. Sense: Sound sense, reason. 

1204. From superior dignity: In consequence of it. From, in the next 
line, has the same meaning. 

1218. St. Evremont : An infidel writer. 
15* 



346 THE COMPLAINT. 

Ere wi-apt by miracle, by reason wing'd, 

ELis mounting mind made long abode in heav'n. 1220 

This is free thinking, unconfin'd to parts, 

To send the soul on curious travel bent. 

Through all the pro^-inces of human thought ; 

To dart her flight through the whole sphere of man ; 

Of this vast univei-se to make the tour ; 1225 

In each recess of space, and time, at home ; 

Familiar with their wonders ; di\^ng deep ; 

And, hke a prince of boundless int'rests there, 

Still most ambitious of th^ most remote ; 

To look on truth unbroken, and entire; 1230 

Truth in the system, the full orb ; where tniths 

By truths enlighten'd, and sustain'd, afford 

An arch-like strong foundation, to support 

Th' incumbent weight of absolute complete 

Comdction : here the more we press, we stand 1235 

More fii-m ; vvho most examine, most beheve. 

Parts, hke half-sentences, confound ; the whole 

Conveys the sense, and God is understood ; 

Who not in fragments writes to human race : 

Read his whole volume, sceptic ! then reply. 1240 

This, this, is thinking free, a thought that grasps 
Beyond a gi-ain, and looks beyond an hour. 
Turn up thine eye, survey this midnight scene : 
What are eaith's kingdoms, to yon boundless orbs, 
Of himian souls, one day, the destin'd range ? 1245 

1219. Ere ivrapt by miracle : Allusion seems to be made to the singular 
visions granted to the Apostle, and recorded in 2 Cor. xii. 

1245. The destin'd range: What a transcendently transporting thought is 
this ! Dr. Thomas Dick amplifies and corroborates it in his " Philosophy 
of a Future State,'' though the sacred writers are very sparing of any clear 
information on the subject. His general course of argument is thus summed 
up : Since the universe is replenished with innumerable systems, and is vast 
and unlimited in its extent; since God endued the mind of man with those 
faculties by which he has explored a portion of its dista/it regions : since 
the soul feels an ardent desire to obtain a more full disclosure of its gran- 
deur and magnificence ; since it is endued with faculties capable of receiving 



NIGHT VII. 34'7 

And wliat yon boundless orl>s to godlike man ? 

Those nurn'rous worlds that throng the firmament, 

And ask more space in heav'n, can roll at large 

In man's capacious thought, and still leave room 

For ampler orbs, for new creations, there. 1250 

an indefinite increase of knowledge on this subject ; since all the knowledge 
it can acquire in the present state respecting the operations and the govern- 
ment of God, is as nothing when compared with the prospects which eter- 
nity niay unfold ; since the universe and its material glories are chiefly 
intended for the gratification of intelligent minds ; and since it is obviously 
inconsistent with the moral character of the Deity to cherish desires and 
expectations which he will finally frustrate and disappoint, the conclusion 
appears to be unavoidable, that man is destined to an immortal existence. 
During the progress of that existence, his faculties will arrive at their full 
expansion, and there will be ample scope for their exercise on myriads of 
objects and events which are just now veiled in darkness and mystery. He 
will be enabled to penetrate more fully into the plans and operations of the 
Divinity ; to perceive new aspects of the Eternal Mind — new evolutions of 
Infinite Wisdom and Design — new displays of Ommpotence, Goodness, and 
Intelligence ; and to acquire a more minute and comprehensive view of all 
the attributes of the Deity, and of the coTinections, relations, and dependen- 
cies of that vast physical and moral system on which his government ex- 
tends. 

The same author, in his " Christian Philosophy," when speaking of the 
wonders of vision, has made some observations that have a bearing upon 
the subject before us. He says : 

There are animals whose range of vision is circumscribed within the 
limits of a few feet or inches ; and had we never perceived objects through 
an organ in the same state of perfection as that with which we are fur- 
nished, we could have formed as little conception of the sublimity and 
extent of our present range of sight, as w'e can now do of those powers of 
vision which would enable us to descry the inhabitants of distant worlds. 
The invention of the telescope shows that the penetrating power of the eye 
may be indefinitely increased ; and since the art of man can extend the 
limits of natural vision, it is easy to conceive that in the hand of Omnipo- 
tence, a slight modification of the human eye might enable it, with the 
utmost distinctness, to penetrate into regions to which the eye can set no 
bounds ; and, therefore, it is not unreasonable to believe, that in the future 
world, this will be one property, among others, of the resurrection-body, 
that it will be furnished with organs of vision far superior to the present, in 
order to gratify its intelligent inhabitant for taking an ample survey of the 
"riches and glory"' of the empire of God 



348 THE COMPLAINT. 

Can such a soul contract itself, to gripe 
A point of no dimension, of no weight ? 
It can ; it does : the world is such a point ; 
And, of that point, how small a part enslaves ! 

How small a part — of nothing, shall I say? 1255 

Why not ? — Friends, our chief treasm-e, how they drop ! 
Lucia, Narcissa fair, Philander, gone ! 
The grave, like fabled Cerberus, has op'd 
A triple mouth ; and, in an awful voice. 
Loud calls my soul, and utters all I sing. 1260 

How the world falls to pieces round about us, 
And leaves us in a ruin of our joy ! 
What says this transportation of my friends ? 
It bids me love the place where now they dwell, 
And scorn this wretched spot they leave so poor. 1265 

Eternity's vast ocean hes before thee ; 
There, there, Lorenzo ! thy Clarissa sails. 
Give thy mind sea-room ; keep it wide of earth, 
That rock of souls immortal ; cut thy cord ; 
Weigh anchor ; spread thy sails ; call ev'ry wind ; 1270 

Eye thy great Pole-star ; make the land of life. 

TWO KINDS OF LIFE AND OF DEATH. 

Two kinds of hfe has double-natur'd man, 
And two of death ; the last far more severe. 
Life animal is nurtur'd by the sun ; 

1258. Cerberus : The fabled God of Hades, stationed at the gates of the 
lower invisible world to prevent the living from entering those regions, and 
the dead from returning to the upper w^orld. He vi^as usually described as 
three- headed. 

1264. It bids me love, &c : It would serve to enhance our love of heaven, 
and to wean us from an immoderate regard to earth, if we oftener meditated 
upon the former as the present dwelling-place of our deceased Christiaa 
relatives and friends. 

1268. Sea-room: A phrase employed by mariners to denote an extensive 
space for a ship to move in, free from shoals or rocks. 
.1271. Life: Life eternal. 



NIGHT VII. 



349 



Thrives on his bounties, triumphs in his beams. 12 75 

Life rational subsists on higher food, 

Triumphant in His beams who made the day. 

When we leave that sun, and are left by this, 

(The fate of all who die in stubborn guilt) 

'Tis utter darkness, strictly double death. 1280 

We sink by no judicial stroke of Heav'n, 

But nature's course, as sure as plummets fall. 

Since God, or man, must alter, ere they meet, 

(For hght and darkness blend not in one sphere) 

'Tis manifest, Lorenzo, who must change. 1285 

If, then, that double death should prove thy lot, 
Blame not the bowels of the Deity : 
Man shall be blest, as far as man permits. 
Not man alone, all rationals, heav'n arms 
With an illustrious, but tremendous pow'r 1290 

To counteract its own most gi'acious ends ; 
And this, of strict necessity, not choice : 
That pow'r denied, men, angels, were no more 
But passive engines, void of praise or blame. 
A nature rational imphes the pow'r 1295 

Of being blest, or wretched, as we please ; 
Else idle reason would have nought to do : 
And he that would be barr'd capacity 
Of pain, courts incapacity of bliss. 

Heav'n wills our happiness, allows our doom ; 1300 

Invites us ardently, but not compels. 

1287. Bowels : Compassion. A Scripture expression. 

1288. Man shall^ &c. : The doctrine here most impressively inculcated is, 
that man's ruin is from himself, which accords with the doctrine of the 
Prophet. " Oh Israel, thou hast destroyed thyself." 

1292. Of strict necessity : This power conferred on man, is conferred as a 
matterof necessity, for if denied he would be no better than a. passive engine 
(1294) ; he would not be man. The clause does not mean that man, in the 
exercise of it, acts from necessity or compulsion in any given way. 

1298. Barred : Deprived of. 

1300. Allows our doom : Permits our ruin ; does not irresistibly prevent it. 



350 



THE COMPLAINT. 



Heay'n but persuades, almiglity man decrees ; 

Man is the maker of immortal fates, 

Man falls by man, if finally he falls ; 

And fall he must, who learns from death alone, 

The di'eadful secret — that he lives for ever. 



1305 



INFIDELITY BETRAYS GUILT AND HYPOCRISY. 

Why this to thee ? — thee yet, perhaps, in doubt 
Of second life ? But wherefore doubtful still ? 
Eternal life is Nature's ardent wish : 

What ardently we wish, we soon believe ; 1310 

Thy tardy faith declares that wish destroy'd : 
What has destroy'd it ?— Shall I tell thee what ? 
When fear'd the future, 'tis no longer wish'd ; 
And when unwish'd, we strive to disbelieve. 
'Thus infidelity our guilt betrays.' 1315 

Nor that the sole detection ? Blush, Lorenzo, 
Blush for hypocrisy, if not for guilt. 

The future fear'd ! An infidel, and fear ? 
Fear what? a dream ? a fable? — How thy dread, 
Unwilling evidence, and therefore strong, 1320 

Affords my cause an undesign'd support I 
How disbelief affirms what it denies ! 
' It, unawares, asserts immortal life.' — 
Surprising ! Infidehty turns out 

A creed, and a confession of our sins : 1325 

Apostates, thus, are orthodox divines. 

Lorenzo, with Lorenzo clash no more : 
Nor longer a transparent vizor wear. 
Think'st thou, religion only has her mask ? 
Our infidels are Satan's hypocrites ; 1330 



1305. WJio learns^ &c. : Who has not before death believed that he is des- 
tined to inannortal existence, and used his opportunities of preparing for 
everlasting blessedness. 

1326. Apostates : Infidels are, in these particulars, orthodox. 

1328. Vizor: Mask. 



NIGHT VII. 351 

Pretend the worst, and, at the bottom, fail. 

When visited by thought (thought will intrude) 

Like him they serve, they tremble, and beheve. 

Is there hypocrisy so foul as this ? 

So fatal to the welfare of the world ? 1335 

What detestation, what contempt, their due ! 

And if unpaid, be thank'd for their escape 

That Christian candour they strive hard to scorn. 

If not for that asylum, they might find 

A hell on earth ; nor 'scape a worse below. 1340 

A REFORMED LIFE RENDERS FAITH EASY. 

With insolence, and impotence of thought, 
Instead of racking fancy, to refute. 
Reform thy manners, and the truth enjoy. — 
But shall I dare confess the dire result ? 

Can thy proud reason brook so black a brand ? 1345 

From purer manners, to subhmer faith. 
Is nature's unavoidable ascent ; 
An honest deist, where the Gospel shines, 
Matur'd to nobler, in the Christian ends. 

When that blest change arrives, e'en cast aside 1850 

This^ong superfluous ; life immortal strikes 
Conviction, in a flood of light divine. 
A Christian dwells, like Uriel, in the sun. 

1337. And if unpaid^ &c. : The obligation of infidels to the kindness of 
Christians, is here declared. 

1341. The meaning will be obvious on restoring the words to the natural 
order : Instead of racking fancy to refute (the truth) with insolence and im- 
potence (weakness) of thought, reform thy manners, and (thus) enjoy the 
truth. 

1349. Matur'd^ &c. : Matured to nobler (state) ends his upward progress 
by becoming a Christian. 

1353. Like Uriels &c. : A very happy comparison, drawn from the Para- 
dise Lost, Book III. 622 : 

He soon 

Saw within ken a glorious Angel stand, 



352 THE COMPLAINT. 

Meridian evidence puts doubt to flight ; 

And ardent hope anticipates the skies. 1355 

Of that bright sun, Lorenzo ! scale the sphere ; 

'Tis easy ; it in\^tes thee ; it descends 

From heav'n to woo, and waft thee whence it came. 

Read and revere the sacred page ; a page 

Where triumphs immortahty ; a page 1360 

Which not the whole creation could produce ; 

Which not the conflagration shall destroy ; 

In natm-e's ruins not one letter lost : 

'Tis printed in the mind of gods for ever. 

VICE ALONE RECOMMENDS THE SCHEME OF ANNIHILATION. 

In proud disdain of what e'en gods adore, 1365 

Dost smile ? — Poor wretch ! thy guardian angel weeps. 

The same -n-liom John sa-sv also in the Sun. 
His hack was turn'd, but not his brightness hid : 
Of beaming sunny rays a golden tiar 
Cii-cled his head^ &c. 

In the same connection the poet had already ingeniously described the 
luminousness of the sun, the orb assigned to this angel as the best post of 
observation, 590—620, We quote a few of these lines as illustrating the 
text of Dr. Young : 

The place he found beyond espression bright, 
Compar'd •with aught on earth, metal or stone ; 

****** 
Eor sight no obstacle found here, nor shade, 
But all sunshine, as when his beams at nooa 
Culminate from th' equator, as they now 
Shot upward still dii'ect, whence no way round 
Shadow from body opaque can fall ; and th' air, 
No where so clear, shai-pen'd his visual ray 
To objects distant far. 

1364. Gods: Glorified saints. 

1366. Thy guardian angel: It was a favourite opinion of the Christian 
fathers, that every individual is under the care of a particular angel who is 
assigned to him as a guardian. They spoke also of two angels — the one 
good, the other evil — whom they conceived to be attendant on each indi- 
vidual : the good angel prompting to all good, and averting ill, and the evil 
angel prompting to all ill, and averting good {Hej-mas ii. 6) . The Jews 



NIGHT VII. 353 

Angels, and men, assent to what I sing ; 

"Wits smile, and thank me for my midnight dream. 

How vicious hearts fume frenzy to the brain ! 

Ppxts push us on to pride, and pride to shame , 1370 

Pert infidehty is Wit's cockade. 

To grace tSae brazen brow that braves the skies, 

By loss of being, dreadfully secure. 

Lorenzo ! if thy doctrine wins the day. 

And drives my dreams, defeated, from the field, 13 75 

If this is all, if earth a final scene. 

Take heed ; stand fast ; be sure to be a knave ; 

A knave in g^rain ! ne'er deviate to the rio;ht : 

Shouldst thou be good — how infinite thy loss ! 

Guilt only makes annihilation gain. 1380 

Blest scheme ! which life deprives of comfort, death 

Of hope ; and which vice only recommends. 

If so, where, infidels, your bait thrown out 

To catch weak converts ? Where your lofty boast 

Of zeal for virtue, and of love to man ? 1385 

Annihilation, I confess, in these. 

What can reclaim you ? Dare I hope profound 
Philosophers the converts of a song ? 
Yet know, its title flatters you, not me : 

Youre be the praise to make my title good ; 1390 

Mine, to bless Heav'n, and triumph in yom* praise. 
But since so pestilential your disease. 
Though sov'reign is the med'cine I prescribe. 
As yet, I'll neither triumph, nor despair : 
But hope, ere long, my midnight di'eam AviU wake 1395 

Yom- hearts, and teach yom- wisdom — to be wise : 

(excepting the Sadducees) entertained this belief, as do tbe Moslems. The 
heathen held it in a modified form, the Greeks having their tutelary dcamon^ 
and the Romans their genius. There is, however, nothing to support this 
notion in the Bible, — Kitto's Cycl. 

1370. Parts : High intellectual powers. 

1389. Its title flatters you : "The Infidel Reclaimed." 



354 THE COMPLAINT. 

For wliy slioiild sotils immortal, made for bliss, 

E'er wish (and wish in vain !) that souls could die ? 

"What ne'er can die, Oh ! grant to hve ; and crown 

The wish, and aim, and labom-, of the skies; 1400 

Increase, and enter on the joys of heav'n : 

Thus shall my title pass a sacred seal. 

Receive an imprimatur from above, 

"While angels shout — An infidel reclaim'd ! 

IMMORTALITY MARVELLOUS, BUT KOT THEREFORE INCREDIBLE. 

To close, Lorenzo. Spite of all my pains, 1405 

Still seems it strange, that thou shouldst live for ever ? 
Is it less strange, that thou shouldst hve at all ? 
This is a miracle ; and that no more. 
"Who gave beginning, can exclude an end. 
Deny thou art ; then, doubt if thou shalt be. 1410 

A miracle with miracles enclosed, 
Is man : and starts his faith at what is strange ? 
What less than wondei's, from the W^ondeifal ; 
What less than miracles, from God, can flow ? 
Admit a God — that mysteiy supreme ! 1415 

That cause uncaused ! all other wonders cease ; 
Nothing is marvellous for him to do : 
Deny Him — all is mysteiy besides ; 
Milhons of mysteries ! each darker far 

Than that thy vrisdom would, un^^dsely, shun. 1420 

If weak thy faith, why choose the harder side ? 
We nothing know, but what is marvellous ; 
Yet what is marvellous, we can't beheve. 
So weak our reason, and so great our God. 
W^hat most surprises in the sacred page, 1425 

Or full as strange, or sti-anger, must be true. 
Faith is not reason's labour, but repose. 

1403. Imprimatur : A Latin word signifying " Let it be printed ;" applied 
to any production for which permission to print is thus given. Here it is 
equivalent to confirmation ; receive a confirmation, &c. 



JflGHT VII. 355 



COMPARATIVE INFLUENCE OF THE PRESENT AND THE FUTURE. 

To faith, and virtue, why so backward, man ? 
From hence : — The present strongly strikes us all ; 
The future, faintly. Can we, then, be men? 1430 

If men, Lorenzo, the reverse is right. 
Eeason is man's peculiar ; sense, the brute's. 
The present is the scanty realm of sense ; 
The future, reason's empire unconfined : 

On that expending all her godhke power, 1435 

She plans, provides, expatiates, triumphs, there ; 
There builds her blessings ; there expects her praise ; 
And nothing asks of fortune, or of men. 
And what is reason ? Be she thus defined 
Reason is upright stature in the soul. 1440 

Oh ! be a man ; — and strive to be a god. 

THE POWER OF HOPE, AND ITS VALUE. 

' For what ? (thou say'st :) To damp the joys of life V 
No ; to give heart and substance to thy joys. 
That tyrant, Hope, mark how she domineers : 
She bids us quit realities for dreams; 1445 

Safety and peace, for hazard and alarm : 
That tyrant o'er the tyrants of the soul, 
She bids Ambition quit its taken prize, 
Spm-n the luxuriant branch on which it sits, 
Though bearing crowns, to spring at distant game ; 1450 

And plunge in toils and dangers — for repose. 
If hope precarious, and of things, when gained, 
Of little moment, and as little stay. 
Can sweeten toils and dangers into joys ; 

What then, that hope, which nothing can defeat, 1455 

Our leave unask'd ? Rich hope of boundless bliss ! 
Bliss, past man's power to paint it ; time's, to close ! 

1432. Man's peculiar : Man's exclusive property. 



356 THE COMPLAINT. 

TMs hope is earth's most estimable prize : 
This is man's portion, while no more than man : 
Hope, of all passions, most befriends us here ; 1460 

Passions of prouder name befiiend us less. 
Joy has her tears, and transport has her death : 
Hope, hke a cordial, innocent, though strong, 
Man's heart, at once, inspirits and serenes ; 
ISTor makes him pay his wisdom for his joys : 1405 

*Tis all our present state can safely bear, 
Health to the frame ! and vigom' to the mind ? 
A joy attempered ! a chastised dehght ! 
Like the fair summer evening, mild and sweet ! 
'Tis man's full cup ; his paradise below! 1470 

A blest hereafter, then, or hoped, or gain'd, 
Is all ; — our whole of happiness : full proof, 
I chose no trivial or inglorious theme. 
And know, ye foes to song ! (well meaning men, 
Though quite forgotten half your Bible's praise !) 1475 

Important truths, in spite of verse, may please. 
Grave minds you praise ; nor can you praise too much : 
If there is weight in an eternity, 
.Let the grave listen ; — and be graver still. 

1464. Serenes : Makes calm and tranquil. 

1471. Or hoped: Either hoped. 

1475- Half your Bible's praise : The poetical parts of it. 

1479. The grave : Those who are grave. 



NIGHT VIII 



VIRTUE'S APOLOGY; 



THE MAN OF THE WORLD ANSWERED. 

IN WHICH ARE CONSIDERED, THE LOVE OF THIS LIFE J THE AMBITION AND 
PLEASURE, WITH THE WIT AND WISDOM O-F THE WORLD. 



And has all nature, then, espoused my part ? 

Have I bribed beav'n, and earth to plead against thee ? * 

And is thy soul immortal ? — What remains ? 

All, all, Lorenzo ! — Make immortal, blest. 

Unblest immortals ! What can shock us more ? 6 

And yet Lorenzo still affects the world ; 

There, stows his treasure ; thence, his title di-aws, 

Man of the world ! (for such wouldst thou be call'd) 

And art thou proud of that inglorious style ? 

Proud of reproach ? For a reproach it was, 10 

In ancient days ; and Christian, — ^in an age, 

When men were men, and not ashamed of heav'n, 

Fired their ambition, as it crown'd their joy. 

Sprinkled with dews from the Castahan font, 
6. Affects: Desires. 11-13. Christian: To be a Christian ^rec?, &c. 
14. Castalian font : A fountain sacred to the Muses on Mount Parnassus, 



358 THE COMPLAINT. 

Fain would I re-baptize thee, and confer 15 

A purer spirit, and a nobler name. 

Thy fond attachments, fatal and inflamed, 
Point out my path, and dictate to my song : 
To thee, the world how fail* ! how strongly strikes 
Ambition ! and gay pleasure stronger still ! 20 

Thy triple bane ! the triple bolt, that lays 
Thy virtue dead ! Be these my triple theme ; 
Nor shall thy wit, or wisdom, be forgot. 

Common the theme ; not so the song ; if she 
My song invokes, Urania, deigns to smile. 25 

The charm that chains us to the world, her foe, 
If she dissolves, the man of earth, at once. 
Starts from his trance, and sighs for other scenes ; 
Scenes, where these sparks of night, these stars shall shine 
Unnumber'd suns, (for all things, as they are, 30 

The blest behold ;) and, in one glory, pour 
Their blended blaze on man's astonish'd sight ; 
A blaze, — the least illustrious object there. 

Lorenzo ! since eternal is at hand, 
To swallow time's ambitions; as the vast 35 

Xeviathan, the bubbles vain, that ride 
Hjgh on the foaming billow ; what avail 
High titles, high descent, attainments high. 
If unattain'd our highest ? O Lorenzo ! 
What lofty thoughts, these elements above, 40 

in Greece. Lorenzo had been sprinkled with the dews of Pagan wisdom 
and poesy. Our author would pour upon him the water of Christian Bap- 
tism, and secure to him the Christian character corresponding to that bap- 
tism. 

25. Urania was, in the Pagan Mythology, the goddess of astronomy, and 
by a poetic license, though entirely an imaginary being, is here invoked as 
presiding over all worlds, by a reference to which, in part, the eiFort is made 
to eradicate an undue love for this earth. 

34. Eternal : Put for eternity. 

35. Ambitions : Objects of ambition. 

35, 36. As the vast Leviathan^ or whale, swallows the hubbies vain^ &c. 



v> 



NIGHT vm. 359 

What tow'ring hopes, what sallies from the sun, 

What grand surveys of destiny divine, 

And pompous presage of unfathom'd fate, 

Should roll in bosoms, where a spirit burns, 

Bound for eternity ! In bosoms read 45 

By Him, who foibles in archangels sees ! 

On human hearts He bends a jealous eye. 

And marks, and in heav'n's register enrolls 

The rise and progress of each option there ; 

Sacred to doomsday ! That the page unfolds, 60 

And spreads us to the gaze of gods and men. 

THIS WORLD COMPARED WITH THE NEXT. 

And what an option, Lorenzo, thine ? 

This world ! and this, unrival'd by the skies ! 

A world, where lust of pleasure, grandeur, gold, 

Three demons that divide its realms between them, 55 

With strokes alternate buffet to and fro 

Man's restless heart, their sport, their flying ball ; 

Till, with the giddy circle, sick and tired. 

It pants for peace, and drops into despair. 

Such is the world Lorenzo sets above 60 

That glorious promise, angels were esteemed 

Too mean to bring ; a promise, their Adored 

Descended to communicate, and press. 

By counsel, miracle, hfe, death, on man. 

Such is the world Lorenzo's wisdom wooes, 65 

And on its thorny pillow seeks repose ; 

A pillow, which, like opiates ill prepared, 

Intoxicates, but not composes ; fills 
46. Foibles, &c. : Job iv. 18, " His angels he charged with folly." 
50. Sacred to doomsday : Reserved for disclosure at the day of final sen- 
tence or judgnaent. 

53. UnrivaPd: That is, in Lorenzo's opinion. 

54. Where lust. &c. : Called by the Apostle John (1 Ep. ii. 16) , " the Inst 
of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life." 



360 



THE COMPLAINT. 



The visionary mind with gay chimeras, 

All the wild trash of sleep, without the rest ; 

What unfeign'd travel, and what di-eams of joy ! 



70 



THE GAY AND THE BUSY DESCRIBED. 

How frail, men, things ! how momentary both ! 
Fantastic chase of shadows, hunting shades ! 
The gay, the busy, equal, though unhke ; 
Equal in wisdom, differently wise ! VS 

Through flow'ry meadows, and thro' dreaiy wastes, 
One bustling, and one dancing, into death. . 
There's not a day, but, to the man of thought. 
Betrays some secret, that throws new reproach 
On hfe, and makes him sick of seeing more. 80 

The scenes of bus'ness tell us — " What are men ;" 
The scenes of pleasure — ' What is all beside ;' 
There, others we despise ; and here, ourselves. 
Amid disgust eternal, dwells delight ? 
'Tis approbation strikes the string of joy. 85 



THE PROUD, THE SENSUAL, AND THE GRAVE. 

What wondrous prize has kindled this career, 
Stuns with the din, and chokes us with the dust, 
(On hfe's gay stage, one inch above the grave T\ 
\^ proud run up and down in quest of eyes ; \ 
The sensual in pursuit of something worse ; 90 

The grave, of gold ; the politic, of pow'r ; 
And all, of other butterflies, as vain ! 
As eddies draw things frivolous and light, 
How is man's heart by vanity drawn in ; 

69. Chimeras : Incongruities, improbable imaginings. The allusion is ex- 
plained in a former note. 

89. In quest of eyes : In search of observers, of persons to look at, and ad- 
mire them. 

92. Of other : In quest of other. 



NIGHT VIII. 3G1 

On the swift circle of returning toys, 95 

WMiTd, straw-like, round and round, and then ingulf' d, 
Where gay delusion darkens to despair ! 

THE WOELd's history. 

* This is a beaten track.' — Is this a track 
Should not be beaten ? Fever beat enough, 
Till enough learnt the truths it would inspire. 100 

Shall truth be silent because folly frowns ? 
Turn the world's history ; what find we there. 
But fortune's sports, or nature's cruel claims. 
Or woman's artifice, or man's revenge. 

And endless inhumanities on man ? 105 

Fame's trumpet seldom sounds, but, hke the knell, 
It brings bad tiding-s : how it hourly blows 
Man's misadventures round the hst'ning world ! 
Man is the tale of narrative old Time ; 

Sad tale ! which high as paradise begins ; 110 

As if the toil of travel to delude, 
From stage to stage, in his eternal round, 
The days, his daughters, as they spin our hours 
On fortune's wheel, where accident unthought 
Oft, in a moment, snaps hfe's strongest thi-ead, 115 

Each, in her turn, some tragic story tells, 
With, now and then, a wretched farce between ; 
And fills his chronicle with human woes. 

Time's daughters, true as those of men, deceive us ; 
Not one, but puts some cheat on all mankind: 120 

While in their father's bosom, not yet ours, 
They flatter oiu- fond hopes ; and promise much 

98. " This is a beaten track ;" An objection supposed to be made by 
Lorenzo in disgust. 

113. The Bays, kc. : These are beautifully personified as the Daughters 
of Time, who spin the hours (like a thread) on Fortune's wheel, or the 
wheel of Providence, &c. 

119. True: Truly, really. 
16 



362 THE COMPLAINT. 

Of amiable ; but hold him not o'er wise, 

Who dares to trust them ; and laugh round the year, 

At still-confiding, still-confounded, man ; 125 

Confiding, though confounded ; hoping on, 

Untaught by trial, uncon^■inced by proof, 

And ever looking for the never seen. 

Life to the last, like hardened felons, hes ; 

Nor owns itself a cheat, till it expires. 130 

Its little joys go out by one and one. 

And leave poor man, at length, in perfect night ; 

Night darker than what now involves the pole. 

A JUST ESTIMATE OF THIS WORLD. 

O Thou, who dost permit these ills to fall. 
For gracious ends, and wouldst that man should mourn ! 135 
O Thou, whose hands this goodly fabric framed. 
Who know'st it best, and wouldst that man should know ! 
What is this sublunary world ? A vapour ! 
A vapour all it holds ; itself a vapour, 

From the damp bed of chaos, by thy beam 140 

Exhaled, ordained to swim its destined hour 
In ambient air, then melt, and disappear. 
Earth's days are numbered, nor remote her doom , 
As mortal, though less transient, than her sons ; 
Yet they doat on her, as the world and they 145 

Were both eternal, sohd ; Thou, a dream. 

THE VOYAGE OF LIFE. 

They doat, on what ? Immortal views apart, 

A re^on of outsides ! a land of shadows ! 

A fruitful field of flow'ry promises ! 

A wilderness of joys ! perplex'd with doubts, 150 

And sharp with thorns ! a troubled ocean, spread 

With bold adventurers, their all on board ; 

145. As: As if. 



NIGHT viir. 363 

No second hope, if here their fortune frowns ! 

Frown soon it must. Of various rates they sail, 

Of ensigns various ; all alike in this, 155 

All restless, anxious ; toss'd with ho]>es and feai-s, 

In calmest skies ; obnoxious all to storm ; 

And stormy the most general blast of life : 

All bound for happiness ; yet few pro\nde 

The chart of knowledge, pointing where it lies; 160 

Or virtue's helm, to shape the course design'd : 

All, more or less, capricious fate lament, 

Now lifted by the tide, and now resorbed, 

And farther from their wishes than before : 

All, more or less, against each other dash, 165 

To mutual hurt, by gusts of passion driven, i 

And suff'ring more from folly than from fate. 

Ocean ! thou dreadful and tumultuous home 
Of dangers, at eternal war with man ! 

Death's capital, where most he domineei-s, lYO 

With all his chosen terrors ft-owning round, 

163. Resorbed: Drawn down again, swallowed up. 

168. This paragraph contains a beautiful apostrophe to the Ocean^ remind- 
ing us of the finest strains of Lord Byron : 

EoU on, thou deep and dark-blue ocean— roll ! 
Ten thousand fleets sweep over thee in vain. 
Man marks the earth with ruin — ^liis control 
Stops with the shore ; upon the watery plain 
The wrecks are all thy deed, nor doth remain 
A shadow of man's ravage, save his own, 
When, for a moment, like a drop of rain, 
He sinks into thy depths with bubbling groan, 
"Without a grave, unknell'd, uncoffin'd, and unknown. 

Thou glorious mirror, where the Almighty's fonn 
Glasses itself in tempests ; in all time. 
Calm or convulsed — in breeze, or gale, or storm, 
Icing the pole, or in the torrid clime 
Dark-heaving; boundless, endless, and sublime — 
The image of eternity— the throne 
Of the Invisible ; even from out thy slime 
The monsters of the deep are made ; each zone 
Obeys thee ; thou goest forth , dread, fathomless, alone ! 



364 THE COMPLAINT. 

(Thougli lately feasted high at Albion's cost) 

Wide op'ning, and lond roaring still for more ! 

Too faithful mirror ! how dost thou reflect 

The melancholy face of human life ! 175 

The strong resemblance tempts me farther stiU : 

And haply, Britain may be deeper struck 

By moral truth, in such a mirror seen, 

Which nature holds for ever at her eye. 

Self-flatter'd, unexperienced, high in hope, 180 

When young, with sanguine cheer, and streamei's gay, 
We cut our cable, launch into the world. 
And fondly dream each wind and star our friend ; 
All, in some darhng enterprise embark'd : 
But where is he can fathom its event ? 185 

Amid a multitude of artless hands, 
Euin's sure perquisite ! her lavi^ul prize ! 
Some steer aright ; but the black blast blows hard, 
And puffs them wide of hope : with hearts of proof, 
Full against wind and tide, some win their way; 190 

And when strong effort has deserved the port. 
And tugg'd it into view, 'tis won ! 'tis lost ! 
Though strong their oar, still stronger is their fate : 
They strike ; and, while they triumph, they expire. 
In stress of weather, most; some sink outright; 195 

172. Albion^ cost: The shipwreck of Admiral Balchen is referred to. 
England takes this name from the ivhite chalky cliiFs on her southeastern 
coast, near the Straits of Dover. 

182. Launch into the world : The scenes and employments of the world 
are here represented under the figure of the waters of the ocean. 

189. Wide of hope : Far from the ports they hoped to reach. 

195 — 201. Some sink, &c. : If to extinguish a passion nothing more were 
necessary than to shew its abs( lute futility, the love of posthumous glory 
(says Dr. Thomas Brown) must long have ceased to be a passion, since 
almost every moralist has proved, with most accurate demonstration, the 
absurdity of seeking that which must by its nature be beyond the reach of 
our enjoyment, and almost every poet has made the madness of such a de- 
sire a subject of his ridicule, though, at the same time, it cannot be doubted 
that if the passion could have been extinguished either by demonstration or 



NIGHT viir. 365 

O'er them, and o'er their names, the billows close ; 

To-morrow knows not they were ever born. 

Others a short memorial leave behind. 

Like a flag floating, when the bark's ingulf 'd ; 

It floats a moment, and is seen no more : 200 

One Caesar lives ; a thousand are forgot. 

How few beneath aus|)icious planets born, 

(Darlings of Providence ! fond Fate's elect !) 

With swelling sails make good the promis'd port, 

"With all their wishes freighted ! yet, e'en these, 205 

Freighted with all their wishes, soon complain : 

Free from misfortune, not from nature free. 

They still are men ; and when is man secure ? 

As fatal time, as storm ! the rush of years 

Beats down their strength; their numberless escapes 210 

In ruin end ; and, now, their proud success 

But plants new terrors on the victor's brow : 

What pain to quit the world, just made their own ; 

Their nest so deeply down'd, and built so high ! 

Too low they build, who build beneath the stars. 215 

Wo then apart (if wo apart can be 
From mortal man) and fortune at our nod. 
The gay ! rich ! great ! triumphant ! and august ! 
WTiat are they ? — The most happy (strange to say !) 
Convince me most of human misery : 220 

What are they ? Smiling wretches of to-morrow ! 

ridicule, we should have had fewer demonstrations, and still less wit on the 
subject. " Can glory be anything," says Seneca, " when he who is said to 
be the very possessor of it, himself is nothing !" " Nulla est oranino gloria, 
cum is, cujus ea esse dicitur, non extat omnino." — Broivnh Philos. vol. iii. 
93-4. 

Pope, in his Essay on Man, Ep. iv. 237 — 246, presents us with some fine 
lines on this subject. 

202. Beneath auspicious planets^ &c. : An allusion to the exploded science 
of astrology. 

209. As fatal time, &c. : Time is as fatal, as destructive, as a storm. 
221. Wretches of to-morrow : Smiling now and happy, but liable to be 
wretched to-morrow, or a short time hence. 



S66 THE COMPLAINT. 

More wretched, then, than e'er their slave can be : 

Their treach'rous blessings, at the day of need, 

Like other faithless friends, unmask, and sting. 

Then, what provoking indigence in wealth ! 225 

What aggravated impotence in power ! 

High titles, then, what insult of their pain ! 

If that sole anchor, equal to the waves. 

Immortal hope ! defies not the rude storm, 

Take comfort from the foaming billow's rage, 230 

And makes a welcome harbour of the tomb. 

THE SEVERAL STAGES OF LIFE, IN THE HISTORY OF FLORELLO. 

Is this a sketch of what thy soul admires ? 
' But here (thou say'st) the miseries of life 
Are huddled in a group. A more distinct 
Survey, perhaps, might bring thee better news.' 235 

Look on life's stages : they speak plainer still ; 
The plainer they, the deeper wilt thou sigh. 
Look on thy lovely boy ; in him behold 
The best that can befall the best on earth ; 
The boy has virtue by his mother's side : 240 

Yes, on Florello look : a father's heart 
Is tender, though the man's is made of stone ; 
The truth, through such a medium seen, may make 
Impression deep, and fondness prove thy friend. 

Florello, lately cast on this rude coast, 245 

A helpless infant ; now a heedless child : 
To poor Clarissa's throes, thy care succeeds ; 
Care full of love, and yet severe as hate ! 
O'er thy soul's joy how oft thy fondness frowns ! 
Needful austerities his will restrain; 250 

As thorns fence in the tender plant from harm. 

233-5. But^ &c. : Another objection is, in these lines, supposed to be ad- 
vanced by Lorenzo. 

244. Prove (to be) thy friend. 
247. Clarissa : Wife of Lorenzo. 



KiGHT viir. 367 

As yet, his reason cannot go alone ; 

But asks a sterner nurse to lead it on. 

His little heart is often terrified ; 

The blush of morning, in his cheek, turns pale ; 255 

Its pearly dew-drop trembles in his eye ; 

His harmless eye ! and drowns an angel there. 

Ah ! what avails his innocence ? The task 

Enjoin'd must discipKne his early powders ; 

He learns to sigh, ere he is known to sin ; 260 

Guiltless, and sad ! a wretch before the fall ! 

How cruel this ! more cruel to forbear. 

Our nature such, with necessary pains 

We purchase prospects of precarious peace : 

Though not a father, this might steal a sigh. - 265 

Suppose him disciplined aright, (if not, 
'Twill sink our poor account to poorer still ;) 
Ripe fi'om the tutor, proud of liberty, 
He leaps enclosures, bounds into the world ! 
The world is taken, after ten years' toil, 270 

Like ancient Troy ; and all its joys his own. 
Alas ! the world's a tutor more severe ; 
Its lessons hard, and ill deserve his pains ; 
Unteaching all hi^ virtuous nature taught, 
Or books (fair virtue's advocates !) inspired. 275 

For who receives him into public hfe ? 
Men of the world, the terrse-fihal breed, 
Welcome the modest stranger to their sphere, 
(Which glitter'd long, at distance, in his sight) 
And in their hospitable arms enclose: 280 

Men, who think nought so strong of the romance, 

255-7. These are lines of surpassing beauty, describing the unsophis- 
ticated innocence of childhood, using the v/ord " innocence"' in a com- 
parative sense ; for even in childhood we are all corrupt beings, prone to 
moral evil. Our author's language in this connection gives too bright a 
picture of childhood's innocence, to accord fully with the doctrines of Scrip- 
ture. 

277. Tp.rrcB-filial breed ; Breed of the sons of earth. 



368 THE COMPLAINT. 

So rank knight-errant, as a real friend : 

Men, tliat act up to reason's golden rule, 

All weakness of aflPection quite subdued : 

Men, that would blush at being thought sincere, 285 

And feign, for glory, the few faults they want ; 

That love a he, where truth would pay as well ; 

As if, to them, vice shone her own reward. 

Lorenzo ! canst thou bear a shocking sight ? 
Such, for Florello's sake, 'twill now appear : 290 

See, the steel'd files of season'd veterans, 
Train'd to the world, in burnish'd falsehood bright ; 
Deep in the fatal stratagems of peace ; 
All soft sensation, in the throng, rubb'd off; 
All their keen pm*pose in pohteness sheath'd ; 295 

His friends eternal — -during interest ; 
His foes implacable — when worth then- while ; 
At war with every welfare but their own ; 
As wise as Lucifer ; and half as good ; 

And by whom none but Lucifer can gain — 300 

Naked, through these (so common fate ordains) 
Naked of heart, his cruel course he runs, 
Stung out of all, most amiable in life. 
Prompt truth, and open thought, and smiles unfeign'd ; 
Affection, as his species, Avide diffused ; 305 

Noble presumptions to mankind's renown ; 
Lagenuous trust, and confidence of love. 

These claims to joy (if mortals joy might claim) 
Will cost him many a sigh ; till time, and pains. 
From the slow mistress of this school, Experience, 310 

And her assistant, pausing pale Distrust, 
Pm-chase a dear-bought clue, to lead his youth 
Through serpentine obhquities of life, 

282. So rank knight-errant : So much like the fancifu) and irrational con- 
duct of a wandering knight, M'ho was accustomed to pass his time travel- 
ling in search of whimsical adventures. Hke those of Don Quixote. 

306. Presumptions: aspirations. 



NIGHT VIII. 369 

And tlie dark labyrinth of human hearts. 

And happy ! if the clue shall come so cheap : 315 

For, while we learn to fence with pubhc guilt, 

Full oft we feel its foul contagion too, 

If less than heav'nly vu'tue is our guard. 

Thus, a strange kind of curst necessity 

Brings down the sterling temper of his soul, 320 

By base alloy, to bear the current stamp 

Below call'd wisdom ; sinks him into safety ; 

And brands him into credit with the world ; 

Where specious titles dignify disgrace, 

And nature's injuries are arts of hfe ; 325 

Where brighter reason prompts to bolder crimes ; 

And heav'nly talents make infernal hearts ; 

That unsurmountable extreme of guilt ! 

THE MACHIAVELLIAN SYSTEM. 

Poor Machiavel ! who laboured hard his plan, 

316. Fence: Contend. 

329. His plan : Those who wish to read a full and ingenious account of this 
remarkable man, should consult Macaulay's Miscellanies. The doctrine of 
his " Prince" was, that he may do anything to attain his object, in utter 
disregard of the peace or welfare of his subjects, the dictates of honesty and 
honour, or the precepts of religion. There has been a great dispute concern- 
ing the real purport of that publication — whether it was designed to recom- 
mend tyrannical maxims and conduct, or whether it described them more 
luminously than any previous writer had done, for the purpose of exciting 
in the popular mind an abhorrence of tyranny. 

Macaulay says : We doubt whether any name in literary history be so 
generally odious as that of the man whose character and writings we now 
propose to consider. The terms in which he is commonly described would 
seem to import that he is the Tempter, the Evil Principle, the Dis- 
coverer of Ambition and Revenge, the Original Inventor of Perjury ; that 
before the publication of his fatal Prince^ there had never been a hypocrite, 
a tyrant, or a traitor, a simulated virtue or a convenient crime. One writer 
gravely assures us that Maurice of Saxony learned all his fraudulent policy 
from that execrable volume. Another remarks, that since it was trans- 
lated into Turkish, the Sultans have been more addicted than formerly to 
the custom of strangling their brothers. The Church of Rome has pro- 
16* 



370 THE COMPLAINT. 

Forgot, tliat genius needs not go to school ; 33(/ 

Forgot, that man, without a tutor wise. 

His plan had practised, long before 'twas writ. 

The world's all title-page, there's no contents : 

The world's all face ; the man who shows his heart 

Is hooted for his nudities, and scorned. 335 

A man I knew, who hved upon a smile ; 

And well it fed him ; he look'd plump and fair. 

While rankest venom foam'd through ev'ry vein. 

Lorenzo ! what I tell thee, take not ill ; 

Living, he fawn'd on every fool alive ; 340 

And, dying, cm-sed the friend on whom he lived. 

To such proficients thou art half a saint. 

In foreign reahns (for thou hast travelled far) 

How curious to contemplate two state rooks, 

nounced his works accursed things. It is indeed scarcely possible for any 
person not well acquainted with the history and literature of Italy, to read 
without horror and amazement the celebrated treatise which has brought so 
irnich obloquy on the name of Machiavelli. Such a display of wickedness, 
naked yet not ashamed ; such cool, judicious, scientific atrocity, seem rather 
to belong to a fiend than to the most depraved of men. Principles which 
the most hardened ruffian would scarcely hint to his most trusted accom- 
plice, or avow without the disguise of some palliating sophism, even to his 
own mind, are professed without the slightest circumlocution, and assumed 
as the fundamental axioms of all political science. And yet, there is no 
reason whatever to think that those amongst whom he lived saw anything 
shocking or incongruous in his writings. Abundant proofs remain of the 
high estimation in which both his works and his person were held by the 
most respectable among his contemporaries. Clement the Seventh patron- 
ized the publication of those very books which the Council of Trent, in the 
following generation, pronounced unfit for the perusal of Christians. The 
cry against them was first raised beyond the Alps, and seems to have been 
heard with amazement in Italy, 

It is, therefore, in the state of moral feeling among the Italians of those 
times that we must seek lor the real explanation of what seems most mys- 
terious in the life and writings of this remarkable man. 

335. His nudities : His exposure of himself. 

342. To such, &c. : Compared to such, &c. 

344. Rooks : Birds of the crow species : here used as a term to denote 
trickish, rapacious politicians. 



NIGHT VIII. 371 

Studious their nests to feather in a trice ; 345 

With all the necromantics of theii* art, 

Playing the game of faces on each other ; 

Making- court sweet-meats of their latent gall, 

In foohsh hope to steal each other's trust ; 

Both cheating, both exulting, both deceived ; 350 

And, sometimes, both (let earth rejoice) undone ! 

Their parts we doubt not ; but be that their shame. 

Shall men of talents, fit to rule mankind, 

Stoop to mean wiles, that would disgrace a fool ; 

And lose the thanks of those few friends they serve? . 355 

For who can thank the man, he cannot see ? 

Why so much cover ? It defeats itself. 
Ye that know all things ! know ye not, men's heai-ts 
Ai*e therefore known, because they are conceal'd ? 
For why conceal'd? — The cause they need not tell. 360 

I give him joy, that's awkward at a he ; 
Whose feeble nature truth keeps still in awe : 
His incapacity is his renown. 
'Tis great, 'tis manly, to disdain disguise ; 
It shows our spirit, or it proves om- strength. 365 

Thou say'st 'tis needful. Is it therefore right ? 
Howe'er, I grant it some small sign of gTace, 
To strain at an excuse. And wouldst thou then 
Escape that cruel need ? Thou mayst with ease ; 
Think no post needful that demands a knave. 370 

346. Necromantics : Deceptions, tricks ; a term descriptive of the pre- 
tended art of foretelling future events by holding communication with de- 
parted spirits. 

347. Game of faces : Game of assuming an appearance of friendship when 
hatred rankles in the heart. The same idea is conveyed under another 
figure, and a very original one, in the next line. 

352. Parts: Talents. 

356. This question is based upon the foregoing description of men who 
are not what they seem to be. 

363. His incapacity : That is, to lie without awkwardness. 



372 THE COMPLAINT. 

WLen late oiu' civil helm was shifting hands, 

So P thought : think better if you can. 

But this, how rai-e ! the public path of life 
Is dirty. — Yet, allow that dirt its due, 

It makes the noble mind more noble still : 375 

The world's no neuter ; it will wound, or save ; 
Our vu'tue quench, or indigTiation fire. 
You say, the world, well known, will make a man. 
The world, well known, will give om- hearts to heav'n, 
Or make us demons, long before we die. 380 

VIRTUE HAS HER DIFFICULTIES AND SUFFERINGS. 

To show how fah the world, thy mistress, shines, 
Take either part, sure ills attend the choice ; 
Sure, though not equal, deti-iment ensues. 
l!^ot vu'tue's self is deified on earth ; 

Virtue has her relapses, conflicts, foes ; 385 

Foes that ne'er fail to make her feel their hate. 
Yhtue has her pecuhar set of pains. 
True ; fiiends to \-irtue, last, and least, complain ; 
But if they sigh, can othei-s hope to smile ? 
If wisdom has her miseries to mou]"n, 390 

How can poor foUy lead a happy life ? 
And if both suffer, what has earth to boast. 
Where he most happy, who the least laments ? 
Where much, much patience, the most ens-y'd state. 
And some forgiveness, needs the best of friends ? 395 

For fiiend, or happy life, who looks not higher, 
Of neither shall he find the shadow here. 

The world's sworn advocate, without a fee, 
Lorenzo smartly, with a smile rephes : 

' Thus fai- thy song is right ; and all must own, 400 

Viilue has her peculiar set of pains. — 
And joys peculiar who to vice denies ? 

371-2, Dr. Yotmg's famiHarity with political affairs and court intrigues, 
is manifested in these lines and the |)receding. Pulteney. 



NIGHT VIII. 373 

If vice it is, with natm-e to comply : 

K pride and sense are so predominant, 

To check, not overcome them, makes a saint : 405 

Can nature in a plainer voice proclaim 

Pleasure, and glory, the chief good of man V 

PLEASURE AND GLORY NOT THE CHIEF GOOD OF MAN. 

Can pride and sensuality rejoice ? 
From purity of thought, all pleasure springs ; 
And from an humble spirit all our peace. 410 

Ambition, pleasm-e ! Let us talk of these : 
Of these, the Porch, and Academy talk'd : 
Of these, each following age had much to say : 
Yet unexhausted, still, the needful theme. 
Who talks of these, to mankind all at once 415 

He talks ; for where the saint from either free ? 
Ai-e these thy refuge ? — ISTo : these rush upon thee ; 
Thy ratals seize, and, vulture-like, devour. 
I'll try, if I can pluck thee from thy rock, 
Prometheus ! from this barren ball of earth. 420 

If reason can unchain thee, thou art free. 

409. jlll pleasure, &c. : This remark of our author is not supported by 
experience, but contradicted, unless some qualifying epithet be applied to 
pleasure, such as true, unmingled, or, by all he means, the greatest amount 
of pleasurable emotion. See on 639 — 678. 

412. The Po7'ch and Academy : The instructors in those places in Athens. 
The former, occupied by the Stoics, has been explained in a former note. 
The latter word is to be pronounced with an accent on the tliird syllable. 

The academy of Athens was a public garden or grove in the suburbs of 
that city, named from Academus, who presented it to the citizens ay a place 
.for gymnastic exercises. Within its limits Plato afterwards owned a small 
garden, in which he opened a school. Hence arose the Academic sect, of 
which he was the founder. Plato was born, B. C. 429. — Anthon's Classical 
Diet. 

420. Prometheus: The classical legend is, that Prometheus, one of ths 
Titans, oiFended Jupiter by teaching mankind the arts, especially the use of 
fire. As a punishment, he was chained to a rock on Mount Caucasus, 
where 'a vulture was appointed to prey upon his liver, which grew again at 



3*74 THE COMPLAINT. 



IN WHAT TRUE GREATNESS DOES NOT CONSIST. 

And first, thy Caucasus, ambition, calls : 
Mountain of torments ! eminence of woes ! 
Of courted woes ! and courted through mistake ? 
'Tis not ambition charms thee ; 'tis a cheat 425 

Will make thee start, as H at his Moor. 

Dost grasp at greatness ? First, know what it is : 

Think'st thou thy greatness in distinction lies ? 

Not in the feather, wave it e'er so high, 

By fortune stuck, to mark us from the throng, 430 

Is glory lodged : 'tis lodged in the reverse ; 

In that which joins, in that which equals all, 

The monarch and his slave : ' a deathless soul, 

Unbounded prospect, and immortal kin, 

A Father God, and brothers in the skies :' 435 

Elder, indeed, in time ; but less remote 

In excellence, perhaps, than thought by man : 

Why greater what can fall, than what can rise ? 

If still delirious, now, Lorenzo, go ; 
And with thy full-blown brothers of the world, 440 

Thi'ow scorn around thee : cast it on thy slaves ; 
Thy slaves, and equals : how scorn cast on them 
Rebounds on thee ! If man is mean, as man, 
Art thou a god ? If fortune makes him so, 
Beware the consequence : a maxim that, 445 

night so as to be ready for the vulture's operations by day. From this 
terrible condition he was finally delivered by Hercules. 

The legend is a most expressive illustration of the idea which our author 
conveys of Lorenzo, under the influence of ambition and appetite for sensual 
pleasure. 

422. Thy Caucasus^ ambition: This is not a happy application of the 
above legend, for v/e had just been led by our author to consider the vulture 
on Mount Caucasus as a representative of ambition, and Caucasus as a sym- 
bol of the earthy on which the tortures of ambition are felt by Lorenzo. 

432. Equals all : Makes all equal. 

438. What can fall : The angels. What can rise : Man, 



NIGHT VIII. 3*75 

WMch draws a monstrous picture of mankind, 

Where, in the drapery, the man is lost ; 

Externals flutt'ring, and the soul forgot. 

Thy greatest glory when disposed to boast, 

Boast that aloud, in which thy servants share. 450 

We wisely strip the steed we mean to buy ? 
Judge we, in theu* caparisons, of men ? 
It nought avails thee, where, but what, thou art ; 
All the distinctions of this little life 

Are quite cutaneous, foreign to the man, 455 

When, through death's streights, earth's subtle serpents creep, 
Which wrisfS'le into wealth, or chmb renown, 
As crooked Satan the forbidden tree. 

455. Cutaneous: Rather a singular epithet, and wholly unsuitable in any- 
thing like its common acceptation. It must here mean superficial^ that 
which is not essential, that which merely covers the man. 

456. Streights : Narrow passages. The punctuation at the close of the 
458th line we have taken the liberty to alter, from a comma to a 
period, considering the change necessary to the elucidation of the passage. 

Aspirants to office are here represented as worms or serpents, creeping or 
climbing upward to distinction, as Satan, in the form of a serpent, climbed 
the tree in Paradise. 

458. Crooked Satan : Satan having assumed the form of a serpent. The 
author, doubtless, had in his mind the description which Milton furnishes 
of the incident; it will, perhaps, be gratifying to make here a short ex- 
tract : 

Bo spake the enemy of mankind, inclosed 

In serpent, inmate bad, and toward Eve 

Addi-ess'd his way, not witli indented wave, 

Prone on the ground, as since, but on his rear, 

Circular base of rising folds, that tower'd 

Fold above fold a surging maze, his head 

Crested aloft, and carbuncle his eyes ; 

With burnish'd neck of verdant gold, erect 

Amidst his circling spires, that on the grass 

Floated redundant. Pleasing was his shape, 

And lovely, &c. 

Satan, in the form of the serpent, afterwards thus describes to Eve his 
ascent of the forbidden, tree : 

About the mossy trunk I wound me soon. 

For high from ground the branches would require 

Thy utmost reach or Adam's : Eound the tree 

All other beasts that saw, with like desire 



376 THE COMPLAINT. 

They leave tbeir parti-colour'd robe behind, 

All that now glitters, while they rear aloft 4C0 

Their brazen crests, and hiss at us below. 

Of fortune's fticus strip them, yet ahve ; 

Strip them of body, too ; nay, closer still, 

Away with all, but moral, in their minds ; 

And let, what then remains, impose their name, 465 

Pronounce them weak, or worthy ; great, or mean. 

How mean that snuff of glory fortune hghts, 

And death puts out ! Dost thou demand a test 

(A test, at once, infallible, and short) 

Of real greatness ? That man greatly lives, 470 

"Whate'er his fate or fame, who greatly dies ; 

High-flushed with hope, where heroes shall despair. 

If this a true criterion, many courts. 

Illustrious, might afford but few grandees. 

IN WHAT TRUE GREATNESS DOES CONSIST. 

Th' Almighty, from his throne, on earth surveys 475 

Nought greater than an honest humble heart ; 
An humble heart, his residence ! pronounced 
His second seat ; and rival to the skies. 
The private path, the secret acts of men, 
If noble, far the noblest of our hves ! 480 

Longing and envying stood, but could not reach. 

Amid the tree now got, where plenty hung 

Tempting so nigh, &c.— Paradise Lost, Bh. IX. 494—504, 589—595. 

462. Fucus: Paint, false show. 

467. Snuff of glory : Allusion is made to the glimmering light of the wick 
of a candle when about to burn out ; or to the burning wick which is easily- 
put out. The figure is designed to show, not only that human glory is 
easily destroyed by death, but that it is a paltry and contemptible affair. 

470. Greatly lives : Lives in a dignified and honourable manner. 

477. His residence : The idea is derived from Isaiah Ivii. 15: " Thus saith 
the high and lofty One, that inhabiteth eternity, whose nanie is Holy ; I 
dwell in the high and holy place, with him also that is of a contrite and 
humble spirit." 



NIGHT VIII. 



Bit 



How far above Lorenzo's glory sits 
Th' illustrious master of a name unknown ; 
Whose worth unrivalled, and unwitnessed, loves 
Life's sacred shades, where gods converse with men ; 
x\.nd peace, beyond the world's conception, smiles ! 485 

As thou, (now dark,) before we part, shalt see. 
But thy great soul this sculking glory scorns. 
Lorenzo's sick, but when Lorenzo's seen ; 
And, when he shrugs at pubhc bus'ness, lies. 
Denied the pubhc eye, the public voice, 490 

As if he lived on others' breath, he dies. 
Fain would he make the world his pedestal ; 
Mankind, the gazers ; the sole figure, he. 
Knows he, that mankind praise against their will, 
And mix as much detraction as they can ? 495 

Knows he, that faithless fame her whisper has, 
As well as trumpet ? that his vanity 
Is so much tickled from not hearing all ? 

481-84, How far above, ^c. : Dr. Thomas Brown, in quoting these lines 
observes that if there are many who regret that they are doomed to the 
shade, there are many too who repent that they have ever quitted it ; or, at 
least, there are many who might so repent, if the loss of this very power of 
repentance were not itself an evil, and one of the worst evils of guilty dis- 
tinction, "Bene qui latuit, bene vixit." 

484. Gods : Angels, 

498. From not hearing all : This, and the other considerations here ad- 
duced, are adapted to diminish greatly a love for public applause. Dr. 
Brown has well observed : If all were indeed heard — the detracting whispers 
of fame as well as her clamorous applause — what lessons of humility would 
be taught to the vain and credulous, whose ears the whispers cannot reach, 
and who, therefore, listening only to the louder flatteries that are intended 
to reach them, consider the praise which is addressed to them as but a small 
part of that universal praise which is everywhere, as they believe, pro- 
claiming their merits ; and in their reputation of a few months, which is to 
fade perhaps before the close of a single year, regard themselves as already 
possessing immortality ! In our estimates of glory, however, as a source 
of distinction, the whispers which are not heard are to be taken into account 
with the praises which are heard ; and then, if the heartfelt virtues of both 
be the same, how near to equilibrium will be the happiness of the obscure 
and the illustrious ! 



378 THE COMPLAINT. 

Knows this all-knower, that from itch of praise, 

Or, from an itch more sordid, when he shines, 500 

Taking his country by five hmidred eare. 

Senates at once admire him and despise. 

With modest laughter hning loud applause. 

Which makes the smile more mortal to his fame ? 

His fame, which (hke the mighty Csesar) crowned 505 

With laurels, in full senate greatly falls, 

By seeming friends, that honour and destroy. 

We rise in glory, as we sink in pride : 

Where boasting ends, there dignity begins : 

And yet, mistaken beyond all mistake, . 510 

The Wind Lorenzo's proud — of being proud ; 

And di'eams himself ascending in his fall. 

An eminence, though fancied, turns the brain : 
All vice wants helleboi'e ; but, of all vice. 
Pride loudest calls, and for the largest bowl ; 515 

Because, all other vice unhke, it flies. 
In fact, the point, in fancy most pursued. 
Who court applause, oblige the world in this ; 
They gratify man's passion to refuse. 

Superior honour, when assumed, is lost ; 520 

E'en good men turn banditti, and rejoice. 
Like Kouli Kan, in plunder of the proud. 

506. Greatly falls : Conspicuously or fatally falls, by the agency of seem- 
ing friends. Brutus, Casca, and others, who poignarded Caesar in the senate- 
house, were ostensibly, up to this time, his friends. Hence, says Shakspeare, 
in reference lo Brutus : 

This was the most unkindest cut of all : 

For wiien the noble Csesar saw him stab, 

Ingratitude, more strong than traitors' arms. 

Quite vanquish'd him : then burst his mighty heart ; 

And, in his mantle muffling up his face, 

Even at the base of Pompey's statue. 

Which all the while ran blood, great Caesar fell. 

Oh what a fall was there, my countrymen ! 

514. Hellebore : A poisonous drug, used as an evacuant. 

522. Kouli Kan, or Khan. This was the famous Nadir Schah, or Thamas 
Kouli Khan, a Persian king, a conqueror and usurper, born in 16S6. 
Placed at the head of an army, he gained a signal victory over the Usbeck 



NIGHT VIII. 379 



CHARMS OF PLEASURE, FOR ALL CLASSES 

Thougli somewhat disconcerted, steady still 
To the world's cause, with half a face of joy, 
Lorenzo cries, — ' Be, then, ambition cast ; 525 

Ambition's dearer far stands unimpeach'd, 
Gay pleasure ! Proud ambition is her slave ; 
For her, he soars at great, and hazards ill ; 
For her, he fights, and bleeds, or overcomes ; 
And paves his way with crowns, to reach her smile : 530 

Who can resist her charms ?' — Or, should ? Lorenzo. 
What mortal shall resist, where angels yield ? 
Pleasure's the mistress of ethereal powers ; 
For her contend the rival gods above : 

Pleasure's the mistress of the world below ; 535 

And well it is for man that pleasure charms : 
How would all stagnate, but for pleasure's ray ! 
How would the frozen stream of action cease ! 
What is the pulse of this so busy world ? 
The love of pleasure : that, through every vein, 540 

Throws motion, warmth ; and shuts out death from life. 

Tartars. This excited the jealousy of his superior, and the command was 
given to another person. Nadir remonstrated, and for that was bastinadoed. 
Stung with the disgrace of such unjust treatment, he joined a band of rob- 
bers, and with them ravaged the country of his birth, and put to death his 
uncle, who had treated him ill some years before. Schah Thamas, king 
of Persia, being at this time hard pressed by the Turks and AfFghans, took 
Nadir into his service. These enemies being vanquished by the bravery of 
this man, he was honoured with the title of Thamas Kouli Khan. Afterwards 
he seized his patron, deposed him, and ascended the throne of Persia him- 
self His next enterprise was an attack upon the Great Mogul, He 
marched to India with an immense army, and reached Delhi in 1738. Some 
tumult of the inhabitants arising, he massacred one hundred thousand of 
them. He then concluded a treaty of peace with the Mogul, whose 
daughter he married, receiving with her as a dowry some of the richest 
provinces of the empire contiguous to Persia. In this expedition he carried 
away, and distributed among his officers, it is estimated, in valuables not 
less than $500,000,000. These statements explain and justify the allusions 
to his conduct which our author makes. 



380 THE COMPLAINT. 

Thougli various are tlie tempers of mankind, 
Pleasm"e's gay family holds all in cliains : 
Some most affect the black ; and some the fair ; 
Some honest pleasure court ; and some obscene. 545 

Pleasures obscene are various, as the throng 
Of passions, that can err in human hearts ; 
Mistake their objects, or transgress their bounds. 
Think you there's but one whoredom ? Whoredom all. 
But when our reason licenses dehght. 550 

Dost doubt, Lorenzo ? Thou shalt doubt no more. 
Thy father chides thy gallantries ; yet hugs 
An ugly common harlot in the dark ; 
A rank adulterer with others' gold ! 

And that hag, vengeance, in a corner, charms. 655 

Hatred her brothel has, as well as love, 
Where horrid epicures debauch in blood. 
Whate'er the motive, pleasure is the mark : 

558 — 567. Whate'er the motive, &c. : This, indeed (says Dr. Thomas 
Brown) , though in verse, is as sound philosophy as nauch duller philosophy 
of the same kind ; but poAverfuI as it may be in poetic antithesis, it is as 
verse only that it is powerful, not as a statement of philosophical truths. We 
desire, indeed, all these objects, and, however ill-fitted some of them may 
appear to be productive of delight, we may, perhaps, feel pleasure in all 
these objects, as we certainly should feel pain if we were not to obtain 
what we desire, whatever the object of desire may have been. But it is 
not the pleasure which was the circumstance that prompted our desire 
when it arose : it was the desire previously awakened which was accom- 
panied with pleasure, or was productive of pleasure, the pleasure being in 
all these cases the effect o-f the previous desire, and necessarily presup- 
posing it. I am aware, indeed, that according to the system of many 
philosopher.*!, who consider our own selfish enjoyment as the sole object of 
our wishes, to speak of other desires after mentioning the desire of pleasure 
as one of our emotions, must be absolutely superfluous, since the desire of 
pleasure, according to them, must, in some one of its forms, be the desire of 
evej-ything which man can immediately desire. But, though everything 
W'hich we desire must have seemed to us desirable, as the very fact of the 
desire denotes, and though the attainment of every such desire must be 
attended with pleasure, it does not therefore follow that the pleasure which 
truly attends the fulfilment of desire was the primary circumstance which 
excited the desire itself. — Philo. of the Human Mind, vol. iii., pp. 16 — 20, 



NIGHT VIII. 381 

For her the black assassin draws his sword ; 

For her, dark statesmen trim their midnight lamp, 560 

To which no single sacrifice may fall ; 

For her, the saint abstains ; the miser starves ; 

The stoic proud, for pleasure, pleasure scorn'd ; 

For her, affliction's daughters grief indulge, 

And find, or hope, a luxury in tears ; 565 

For her, guilt, shame, toil, danger, we defy ; 

And, with an aim voluptuous, rush on death. 

Thus universal her despotic power ! 

And as her empire wide, her praise is just. 

563. The stoic proud^ &c. : The error of the ancient inquirers into happi- 
ness, consisted in excessive simplification — in the assertion of one particular 
form of good, as if it were all that deserved the name, and the consequent 
exclusion of other forms, if good, that could not be reduced to the favourite 
species. He who had confined all happiness to the pleasure of the senses 
(as Epicurus) , was, of course, under the necessity of denying that there 
was any moral pleasure whatever which had not a direct relation to some 
mere sensual delight ; while the asserter of a different system — that of the 
Stoics, who had affirmed virtue only to be good — was, of course, under an 
equal necessity of denying that any pleasure of the senses, however intense 
or pure, could be even the slightest element of happiness. Both were right 
in what they admitted, wrong in what they excluded, and the paradoxes 
into which they were led were necessary consequences of the excessive 
simplification. 

A wider and more judicious view of our nature would have shown that 
human happiness is as various as the functions of man — that the Deity who 
has united us by so many relations to the whole living and inanimate 
world, has, in these relations, surrounded us with means of varied enjoy- 
ment, which it is as truly impossible for us not to partake with satisfaction, 
as to behold the very scene itseJf which is forever in all its beauty before 
our eyes — that happiness is the name of a series of agreeable feelings, and 
of such a series only ; and that, whatever is capable of exciting agreeable 
feelings, is, therefore, or may be, to that extent, a source of happiness. 

Man is a sensitive, an intellectual, a moral, and a religious being. There 
are agreeable feelings v/hich belong to him in each of these capacities — a 
happiness, in short, sensitive, intellectual, moral, and religious. Though we 
may affect, in verbal accordance with some system, to deny any of these 
various forms of good, it is only in words that wo can so deny them. — 
Brownh Phil, of the Mind^ iii., 560. 

567. Aim voluptuous : Aim at pleasure. 



382 THE COMPLAINT. 

Patron of pleasure ! doater on delight! 570 

I am thy rival ; pleasure I profess ; 

Pleasure the purpose of my gloomy song. 

Pleasure is nought but virtue's gayer name : 

I wi'ong her still, I rate her worth too low ; 

Viilue the root, and pleasure is the flower; 575 

And honest Epicurus' foes were fools. 

But this sounds harsh, and gives the wise offence : 
If o'erstrain'd wisdom still retains the name. 
How knits austerity her cloudy brow, 

And blames, as bold and hazardous, the praise 580 

Of pleasure to mankind, unpraised, too dear ! 
Ye modern stoics ! hear my soft reply : — 
Their senses men will trust ; we can't impose ; 
Or, if we could, is imposition right ? 

Own honey sweet ; but, owning, add this sting ; 585 

' When mix'd with poison, it is deadly too.' 
Truth never was indebted to a he. 
Is nought but virtue to be praised, as good ? 
Why then is health preferred before disease ? 

576. Honest Epicurus' foes : The Stoics. Epicurus was born 341 B. C, 
soon after the death of Plato, and in 306 B. C, became, at Athens, the 
founder of the Epicurean school of philosophers. It is not a settled point 
what his ethical doctrines were, and hence they have been represented in a 
widely diiFerent manner. Some consider them as favourable to virtue, and 
others exactly the reverse. Anthon says that, setting out from the two facts 
that man is susceptible of pleasure and pain, and that he seeks the one and 
avoids the other, Epicurus propounded that it is a man's duty to endeavour 
to increase to the utmost his pleasures, and diminish to the utmost his 
pains, choosing that which tends to pleasure rather than that which tends to 
pain, and that which tends to a greater pleasure or to a lesser pain, rather 
than that which tends respectively to a lesser pleasure or a greater pain. 
He used the terms pleasure and pain in the most comprehensive way, as 
including pleasure and pain of both mind and body ; and he esteemed the 
pleasures and pains of the mind as incomparably greater than those of the 
body. Making, then, good and evil, or virtue and vice, depend on a ten- 
dency to increase pleasure and diminish pain, or the opposite, he arrived, as 
he easily might do, at the several virtues to be inculcated and vices to be 
denounced. He lived in the most frugal and virtuous manner, though it 
was the delight of the enemies of Epicurus to represent it differently. 



NIGHT VIII. 383 

What nature loves is good, without our leave; 590 

And where no future di-awback cries, ' Beware ;' 

Pleasure, though not from virtue, should prevail. 

'Tis balm to life, and gratitude to Heav'n ; 

How cold our thanks for bounties unenjoy'd ! 

The love of pleasure is man's eldest born, 595 

Born in his cradle, living to his tomb ; 

Wisdom, her youngest sister, though more grave, 

Was meant to minister, and not to mar. 

Imperial pleasure, queen of human hearts. 

THE NATURE, PURPOSE, AND PARENTAGE OF PLEASURE. 

Lorenzo ! thou, her majesty's renown'd, 600 

Though uncoift, counsel, learned in the world ! 
Who think'st thyself a Murray, with disdain - 
Mayst look on me. Yet, my Demosthenes ! 
Canst thou plead pleasure's cause as well as I ? 
Know'st thou her nature, purpose, parentage ? 605 

Attend my song, and thou slialt know them all ; 
And know thyself ; and know thyself to be 
(Strange truth !) the most abstemious man alive. 
Tell not Cahsta : she will laugh thee dead ; 

Or send thee to her hermitage with L . 610 

Absurd presumption ! Thou who never knew'st 

A serious thought I shalt thou dare dream of joy ? 

No man e'er found a happy life by chance, 

Or yawn'd it into being with a wish ; 

Or, v/ith the snout of grov'ling appetite, 615 

597-9. In these lines Wisdom and Pleasure are beautifully personified. 

601. Uncoift: Not wearing the official cap. 

602. Murray : A distinguished lawyer. 

603. My Demosthenes: An allusion to the most distinguished orator of 
ancient Greece. 

609. Calista •" Some attractive friend of Lorenzo. 

615-17. The imagery here employed is, perhaps, me^e expressive than 
any other that could be used, but it is hardly dignified enough to find a place 
in the " Night Thoughts." 



384 THE COMPLAINT. 

E'er smelt it out, and gi'ubbed it from the dirt. 

An art it is, and must be learnt ; and learnt 

With unremitting effort, or be lost ; 

And leave us perfect blockheads in our bliss. 

The clouds may drop down titles and estates ; 620 

Wealth may seek us ; but wisdom must be sought ; 

Sought beyond all ; but (how unhke all else 

We seek on earth !) 'tis never sought in vain. 

Fu'st, pleasure's bii'th, rise, strength, and grandeur 
Brought forth by wisdom, nursed by disciphne, 625 

By patience taught, by perseverance crown' d, 
She rears her head majestic ; round her throne, 
Erected m the bosom of the just, 
Each ^drtue, hsted, forms her manly guard. 
For what are ^artues ? (formidable name !) 630 

What, but the fountain, or defence, of joy ? 
Why, then, commanded ? Need mankind commands, 
At once to merit, and to make, their bhss ? — 
Great Legislator ! scarce so great, as kind ! 
If men are rational, and love dehght, 635 

Thy gracious law but flatters human choice *. 
In the transgression lies the penalty ; 
And they the most indulge who most obey. 
Of pleasure, next, the final cause explore ; 
Its mighty purpose, its important end. G40 

Not to turn human brutal, but to build 
Divine on human, pleasure came from heav'n. 
In aid to reason was the goddess sent ; 
To call up all its strength by such a charm. 
Pleasm-e first succours virtue ; in return, C45 

Virtue gives pleasure an eternal reign. 
W^hat but the pleasure of food, friendship, faith, 
Supports hfe nat'ral, civil, and divine ? 
'Tis from the pleasm-e of repast, we five ; 
'Tis from the pleasure of applause, we please; 650 

'Tis from the pleasure of belief, we pray, 
(All pray'r would cease, if unbeheved the prize :) 
650-2. The statements in these lines need some qualification to accord 



NIGHT VIII. 385 

It serves om-selves, our species, and oui- God ; 

And to serve more, is past tJie sphere of man. 

Glide, then, for ever, pleasm-e's sacred stream ! 655 

Through Eden, as Euphrates ran, it runs, 

And fosters ev'iy growth of happy life ; 

Makes a new Eden where it flows ; — but such 

As must be lost, Lorenzo, by thy fall. 

' What mean I by thy fall ?'— Thou'lt shortly see, 660 

While pleasure's nature is at large displayed ; 
Aheady sung her origin and ends. 
Those glorious ends, by kind, or by degree, 
When pleasure violates, 'tis then a vice, 

A vengeance too ; it hastens into pain : 665 

From due refreshment, life, health, reason, joy ; 
From wild excess, pain, grief, distraction, death ; 
Heav'n's justice this proclaims and that her love. 
What greater e\i\ can I wish my foe, 

Than his full draught of pleasure, from a cask 670 

Unbroach'd by just authority, ungauged 
By temperance, by reason imrefined ? 
A thousand daemons hu'k within the lee. 

with truth. They imply that no attempt is even made to jjlease others, 
except from a regard to the praise we thence anticipate, and that all prayer 
to God is prompted by the pleasure expected. It is but charity to suppose^ 
that Dr. Young here strains and narrows down the truth, for the sake of 
making out an argument on the poiat under discussion. We cannot think 
that he would deny the existence of the operation of much higher, purer, 
and more disinterested motives to prompt to these actions. Why may not 
benevolence excite us to please others ? or, why may not a regard to the 
Divine command to do so be a sufficient motive ? So in regard to prayer. 
Love to God, desire of holiness, and a benevolent regard to the happiness of 
mankind, are, in the pious mind, far more potent motives to prayer than the 
selfish one made so unduly prominent by our author. 

659. By thy fall: Allusion is made to the fall of our first parents in Para- 
dise. 

664. When pleasure violates^ &c. : The results of improper and excessive 
indulgence are set forth. 

673. Lee: Dregs. 
17 



386 THE COMPLAINT. 

Heav'n, others, and ourselves ! uninjured these, 

Drink deep ; the deeper, then, the more divine : 675 

Angels are angels from indulgence there ; 

'Tis unrepenting pleasure makes a god. 

Dost think thyself a god from other joys ? 
A victim rather ! shortly sure to bleed. 

The wrong must mourn : can Heav'n's appointments fail ? 680 
Can man outwit Omnipotence ? strike out 
A self-wrought happiness unmeant by Him 
Who made us, and the world we would enjoy ? 
Who forms an instrument, ordains from whence 
Its dissonance, or harmony, shall rise. 685 

Heav'n bid the soul this mortal frame inspire ; 
Bid ^drtue's ray divine inspire the soul 
With unprecarious flows of vital joy ; 
And, without breathing, man as well might hope 
For life, as, without piety, for peace. 690 

PIETY AND VIRTUE COMPARED THEIR PLEAGURES. 

* Is virtue, then, and piety the same ?' 
No ; piety is more : 'tis virtue's source ; 
Mother of ev'ry worth, as that of joy. 
Men of the world this doctrine ill digest : 
They smile at piety ; yet boast aloud 695 

Good will to men ; nor know they strive to part 
What nature joias ; and thus confute themselves. 
With piety begins all good on earth ; 
'Tis the first-born of rationahty. 

Conscience, her first law broken, wounded hes ; , VOO 

Enfeebled, lifeless, impotent to good ; 
A feign'd affection bounds her utmost pov/r. 
Some we can't love, but for the Almighty's sake : 

674. Uninjured these: The precedinij words of this line are an exclanna- 
tory phrase. What follows may be thus paraphrased: — These (that is, 
Heav'n, others, and ourselves) being umnjnred. drkik deep of pleasure. The 
deeper then (that is, v/hile there is no vioialion ot what is due lo God, to 
others, and ourselves) the morc^ &c. 676. There — in the manner just ex- 
plained. 



NIGHT VIII. 387 

A foe to God was ne'er true friend to man ; 

Some sinister intent taints all he does ; 705 

And in his kindest actions he's mikind. 

On piety, humanity is bnilt ; 
And, on humanity, much happiness ; 
And yet still more on piety itself. 

A soul in commerce with her God, is heav'n ; 710 

Feels not the tumults and the shocks of hfe. 
The whirls of passion, and the strokes of heart. 
A Deity beheved, is joy begun ; 
A Deity adored, is joy advanced ; 

A Deity beloved, is joy matured. 715 

Each branch of piety dehght inspires ; 
Faith builds a bridge from this world to the next 
O'er death's dark gulf, and all its horror hides ; 
Praise, the sweet exhalation of our joy, 

That joy exalts, and makes it sweeter still ; 720 

Pray'r ardent opens heav'n, lets down a stream 
Of gloiy on the consecrated hour 
Of man, in audience with the Deity. 
Who worships the great God, that instant joins 
The iiret in heav'n, and sets his foot on hell. 725 

Lorenzo ! when wast thou at church before ? 
Thou think'st the service long ; but is it just ? 
Though just, unwelcome ; thou hadst rather tread 
Unhallow'd ground ; the muse, to win thine ear, 
Must take an air less solemn. She comphes. 730 

Good conscience ! at the sound the world retires ; 

710. Commerce: Communion, friendship. 

713-15. An elegant climax is here exhihited. Some critics have an- 
nounced, to the disparagement of Dr. Young, that he deals only in theo- 
retical views of religion, and presents none of the experimental kind ; but 
this, and many other passages which might be selected, may serve to show 
the unfairness of such a criticism. Yet it is matter of regret that he does 
not more frequently occupy his pages with practical illustrations of true 
religion. 

731. Good conscience (at the sound of which word men of the world 



388 THE COMPLAINT. 

Verse disaffects it, and Lorenzo smiles : 

Yet has she her seraglio full of charms ; 

And such as age shall heighten, not impair. 

Art thou dejected ? Is thy mind o'ercast ? 735 

Amid her fair ones, thou the fairest choose, 

To chase thy gloom — ' Go, fix some weighty truth ; 

Chain down some passion ; do some gen'rous good ; 

Teach ignorance to see, or grief to smile ; 

Correct thy friend ; befriend thy greatest foe ; 740 

Or with warm heart, and confidence divine. 

Spring up, and lay strong hold on Him v/ho made thee.' 

Thy gloom is scattered, sprightly spirits flow ; 

Though wither'd is thy vine, and harp unstrung. 

MIRTH AND LAUGHTER. 

Dost call the bowl, the viol, and the dance, 745 

Loud mirth, mad laughter ? Wretched comforters ! 
Physicians ! more than half of thy disease. 
Laughter, though never censured yet as sin, 
(Pardon a thought that only seems severe) 
Is half immoral : is it much indulged ? ViiO 

By venting spleen, or dissipating thought, 
It shews a scorner, or it makes a fool ; 
And sins, as hurting others, or ourselves. 
'Tis pride, or emptiness, applies the straw, 
That tickles Httle minds to mirth effuse; 755 

Of grief approaching, the portentous sign ! 

withdraw) is in this passage personified — is described as having a seraglio, 
and fair ones^ in allusion to the palace of the Sultan of Turkey, containing 
apartments for beautiful females, to minister to his pleasure. These /air ones 
are described in 737 — 742. They are certain actions which "good con- 
science" approves and enjoins. 

755. Effuse : Profuse, excessive. 

756. "I said of laughter, it is mad; and of mirth, what doeth it? The 
heart of fools is in the house of mirth. Sorrow is better than laughter. As 
the crackling of thorns under a pot, so is the laughter of the fool." — Eccle- 
siastes. 



NIGHT VIII. «^89 

The house of laughter makes a house of wo. 

A man triumphant is a monstrous sight : 

A man dejected is a sight as mean. 

What cause for triumph, where such ills abound ? *1Q0 

What for dejection, where presides a Pow'r, 

Who call'd us into being to be blest ? 

So grieve, as conscious, grief may rise to joy *. 

So joy, as conscious, joy to grief may fall. 

Most true, a wise man never will be sad ; 765 

But neither will sonorous, bubbhng mu-th, 

A. shallow stream of happiness betray : 

Too happy to be sportive, he's serene. 

Yet wouldst thou laugh (but at thy own expense) 
This counsel strange should T presume to give — 7 70 

* Retire, and read thy Bible, to be gay.' 
There truths abound of sov'reign aid to peace ; 
Ah ! do not prize them less, because inspired. 
As thou, and thine, are apt and proud to do. 
If not inspired, that pregnant page had stood, 775 

Time's treasure, and the wonder of the wise ! 
Thou think'st, perhaps, thy soul alone at stake : 
Alas ! — Should men mistake thee for a fool ; 
What man of taste for genius, wisdom, truth. 
Though tender of thy fame, could interpose ? 780 

Beheve me, sense, here, acts a double part, 
And the true critic is a Christian too. 
But these, thou think'st, are gloomy paths to joy. — 
True joy in sunshine ne'er was found at first : 
They, first, themselves offend, who greatly please ; 785 

And travail only gives us sound repose. 
Heav'n sells all pleasure ; effort is the price : 
The joys of conquest are the joys of man ; 
And glory the victorious laurel spreads 

777. Thy soul : Tiie welfare of thy soul in eternity. Our author adds to 
this, that Lorenzo's reputation as a man of sense and an able critic, was also 
in peril, through neglect or contempt of the inspired volume. 

785. Please : That is, themselves. 



390 THE COMPLAINT. 

O'er pleasure's pure, perpetual, placid stream. ^90 

SUBSTANTIAL JOYS, THE PRODUCT OF EXERTION AND VIGILANCE. 

There is a time, when toil must be preferr'd, 
Or joy, by mistimed fondness, is undone. 
A man of pleasure is a man of pains. 
Thou wilt not take the trouble to be blest. 
False joys, indeed, are born from want of thought; 795 

From thought's full bent, and energy, the true ; 
And that demands a mind in equal poise, 
Remote from gloomy grief and glaring joy. 
Much joy not only speaks small happiness. 
But happiness that shortly must expire. 800 

Can joy, unbottom'd in reflection, stand ? 
And, in a tempest, can reflection hve ? 
Can joy, like thine, secure itself an hour ! 
Can joy, hke thine, meet accident unshock'd ? 
Or ope the door to honest poverty ? 805 

Or talk with threat'ning death, and not turn pale ? 
In such a world, and such a nature, these 
Ai'e needful fundamentals of delight : 
These fundamentals give delight indeed ; 
Delight, pure, dehcate, and durable ; 810 

Dehght, unshaken, masculine, divine ; 
A constant, and a sound, but serious joy. 

Is joy the daughter of severity ? 

790. The reader should notice the alliteration in this line, every word but 
two beginning with the sanae letter. 

793. This line presents an alliterated contrast, which is the more striking 
because it seems to convey contradictory ideas, owing to the ambiguity in 
the meaning of the word pains. Pleasure, pain, begin with the same letter, 
and at first seem to denote opposite states of feeling ; but the connection 
shows that the latter word here denotes careful and strenuous exertion. 

797. And that : True joy demands a mind in equal poise., equally balanced- 

807. These : Joys which are founded on reflection, are not shocked by acci- 
dent, nor banished by a descent to honest poverty, nor by the prospect of con- 
flict with death. 



NIGHT VIII. 391 

It is : — Yet far my doctrine from severe. 

* Rejoice for ever :' It becomes a man ; 815 

Exalts, and sets him nearer to the gods. 

' Rejoice for ever,' nature cries, ' rejoice ;' 

And drinks to man, in her nectareous cup, 

Mix'd up of dehcates for ev'ry sense ; 

To the great Founder of the bounteous feast, 820 

Drinks glory, gratitude, eternal praise ; 

And he that will not pledge her, is a churl. 

Ill firmly to support, good fully taste. 

Is the whole science of felicity. 

Yet sparing pledge : her bowl is not the best 825 

Mankind can boast.—' A rational repast ; 

Exertion, vigilance, a mind in arms ; 

A military discipline of thought. 

To foil temptation in the doubtful field ; 

And ever-waking ardour for the right ;' 830 

'Tis these first give, then guard, a cheerful heart. 

Nought that is right think little ; well aware. 

What reason bids, God bids ; by his command 

How aggrandized the smallest thing we do ! 

Thus, nothing is insipid to the wise : 835 

To thee, insipid all, but what is mad ; 

816. The gods: Angels. Compare 676-7. 

818. Nectareous cup : Nectar, in the mythology of the Greeks and 
Romans, was the supposed drink of the immortal gods (ambrosia being 
their food), and was fabled to contribute largely to their immortality. If 
we believe the accounts of the poets, the qualities of this liquor must have 
been of a most delicious character. It imparted youth, bloom, and vigour 
to the body, and possessed the power of repairing all the defects and injuries 
of the mental constitution — Brande. 

823. lll^ &c. : Firmly to support evil (or adversity) , fully to taste good (the 
advantages and prosperities of life) , is the whole science of happiness^ that is, 
according to the dictates of nature (817). 

825. Yet sparing pledge : Yet drink sparingly of the bowl which nature 
furnishes : her bowl is not the best, &c. The description of a better bowl 
immediately follows (826—830) . 

832. Think little : Think of little consequence to your happiness. 



392 THE COMPLAINT. 

Joys season'd liigli, and tasting strong of guilt. 

WHAT IT IS TO FOLLOW NATURE. 

* Mad ! (thou reply'st, with indignation &ed) 
Of ancient sages proud to tread the steps, 
I follow nature.' — Follow nature still, 840 

But look it be thine own : Is conscience, then, 
No part of nature ? Is she not supreme ? 
Thou regicide 1 raise her from the dead ! 
Then, follow nature ; and resemble God. 

When, spite of conscience, pleasure is pursued, 845 

Man's nature is unnaturally pleased : 
And what's unnatural, is painful too 

842. No part of nature: In the controversy with the man of the world 
personated by Lorenzo, this question is a fundamental one. Conscience is the 
highest faculty in the human soul^ the commanding^ the authoritative portion 
of our nature — that which we are constituted to feel it our obligation as 
well as interest to obey. When we disobey its monitions, we feel blame- 
worthy, and are so. Since conscience prompts to virtue, it is a just infer- 
ence that man was made for virtuous action ; and he does not act according 
to the dictates of his nature as a whole, when he gratifies his other faculties 
and propensities in a manner or degree disapproved by the supreme faculty 
— that which the Creator evidently designed to control our actions. 

The conclusion is, says Dr. Beattie, that to allow no more to this part 
than to other parts of our nature — to let it guide and govern only occasion- 
ally, in common with the rest, as its turn happens to come, this is not to act 
conformably to the constitution of man ; and though conscience may lose 
its power when borne down by evil habits or tumultuous passion, as the 
strongest man, by being kept in fetters, may lose the use of his limbs, yet 
conscience still retains its authority, that is, its right to govern. It pre- 
scribes measures to every appetite, affection, and passion ; and says to every 
other principle of action, so far thou mayest go^ but no farther. 

Hence, adds the same author, it may be seen how foolishly those men 
argue who give way to all their passions without reserve, and excuse them- 
selves by saying, that every passion is natural, and that they cannot be 
blamed for doing what nature prompts them to do. It is only a part, and 
that confessedly an inferior part of their nature, that prompts them to such 
indulgence. Their nature, as a whole, remonstrates against such indulgence. 
It is, therefore, unnatural, in the proper sense of that word, and, therefore, 
to be condemned and abandoned. 



NIGHT VIIT. 393 

At intervals, and must disgust e'en thee ! 

The fact thou know'st ; but not, perhaps, the cause. 

Virtue's foundations with the world's were laid ; 850 

Heav'n mix'd her with our make, and twisted close 

Her sacred int'rests with the strings of life. 

Who breaks her awful mandate, shocks himself, 

His better self: And is it greater pain, 

Our soul should murmm-, or om- dust repine ? 855 

And one, in their eternal war, must bleed. 

If one must suffer, which should least be spared ? 
The pains of mind surpass the pains of sense : 
Ask, then, the gout, what torment is in guilt. 
The joys of sense, to mental joys are mean : 860 

Sense on the present only feeds ; the soul 
On past, and future, forages for joy. 
'Tis hers by retrospect, through time to range ; 
And forward tim.e's great sequel to survey. 
Could human courts take vengeance on the mind, 865 

Axes might rust, and racks, and gibbets, fall : 
Guard, then, thy mind, and leave the rest to fate. 

KNOW THYSELF. 

Lorenzo ! wilt thou never be a man ? 

850. Virtue's foundations, &c. : This important subject is fully presented 
in Boyd's Eclectic Moral Philosophy, pp. 89—95 ; also in Chalmers's Insti- 
tutes of Theology, vol. i., pp. 24-5, who therein thus writes : In the 
Divinity alone it is that virtue has its fountain-head and its being; not, how- 
ever, in the fountain-head of the Divine will, but higher than this, and 
anterior to this — in the fountain-head of the Divine Nature. It is not the 
will of God which determines his nature, but the nature of God which 
determines his will. That is a code of pure and perfect righteousness 
which is graven on the tablet of the Divine jurisprudence : but it did not 
originate there; for there it is but a transcript from the prior tablet of the 
Divine character. Virtue is not right because God wills it, but God wills it 
because it is right. The moral has antecedency to the judicial, having had 
its stable and everlasting residence in the constitution of the Deity, before 
that he willed it into a law for the government of his creatures. 

860. To : Compared to. 



394 THE COMPLAINT. 

The man is dead, who for the body hves, 

Lured, by the beating of his pulse, to hst 870 

With ev'ry hist that wars against his peace, 

And sets him quite at variance with himself. 

Thyself, first, know ; then love : A self there is 

Of virtue fond, that kindles at her charms. 

A self there is as fond of ev'ry vice, 875 

While ev'ry virtue wounds it to the heart : 

Humility degrades it, justice robs. 

Blest bounty beggars it, fair truth betrays, 

And godhke magnanimity destroys. 

This self, when rival to the former, scorn ; 880 

When not in competition, kindly treat. 

Defend it, feed it : — But when virtue bids, 

Toss it, or to the fowls, or to the flames. 

And why ? 'Tis love of pleasure bids thee bleed ; 

873. Thyself: This term, as the author shows, embraces a self that is fond 
of virtue^ and a self as fond of every vice — a higher and lower self; the for- 
mer consisting of reason and conscience, the latter of the propensities and 
desires. I'his twofold self is strongly delineated by the Apostle Paul in his 
Letter to the Romans, chap. vii. 

877-9. Humility degrades, &c. : That is, our depraved self, consisting of 
perverted appetites and desires, looks upon humility as degrading, justice to 
others as defrauding ourselves, liberality to the poor as reducing ourselves to 
want, &c. 

883. Or to the fowls : Either to the, &c. 

884. The love of pleasure, &c. : The love of a higher pleasure bids thee 
sacrifice a lov^^er enjoyment even at great pain of self-denial. This point is 
exceedingly well illustrated by Dr. Beattie in his Moral Science, thus : 
If we could at once gratify all the propensities of our nature, that would be 
our highest possible happiness, and what we might call our summum bonum, 
or chief good. But that cannot be ; for our propensities are often incon- 
sistent, so that if we comply vv^ith one we must contradict another. He 
who is enslaved to sensuality, cannot, at the same time, enjoy the more 
sublime pleasures of science and virtue ; and he who devotes himself to 
science, or adheres to virtue, must often act in opposition to his inferior 
appetites. The ambitious man cannot labor for the acquisition of power, 
and taste the sweets of indolence at the same time ; and the miser, while 
he indulges himself in the contemplation of his wealth, must be a stranger 
to the pleasures of beneficence. The gratification of all our appetites at 



NIGHT VIII. 395 

Comply, or own self-love extinct, or blind. 885 

VICE A MISTAKEN, VIRTUE A WISE, SELF-LOVE. 

For what is vice ? Self-love in a mistake : 
A poor blind merchant buying joys too dear. 
And virtue, what ? 'Tis self-love in her wits, 
Quite skilful in the market of delight. 

Self-love's good sense is love of that dread Pow'r, 890 

From whom she springs, and all she can enjoy. 
Other self-love is but disguised self-hate ; 
More mortal than the malice of our foes ; 
A self-hate, now, scarce felt ; then felt full sore. 
When being curst ; extinction, loud implored ; 895 

And ev'ry thing preferr'd to what we are. 

Yet this self-love Lorenzo makes his choice ; 
And, in this choice triumphant, boasts of joy. 
How is his want of happiness betray'd. 

By disaffection to the present hour ! 900 

Imagination wanders far a-lield. 
The future pleases : Why ! The present pains. — 
' But that's a secret.' Yes, which all men know ; 
And know from thee, discover'd unawares. 
Thy ceaseless agitation, restless roll 905 

once, is, therefore, impossible. Consequently, some degree of self-denial 
must be practised by every man, whether good or bad — by the ruffian as 
well as the saint, the sensualist as well as the hermit ; and man's greatest 
possible happiness must be, at least in the present state, not a complete 
gratification of all our propensities, but the most comprehensive gratification 
of which we are capable. Now, some pleasures conduce more to happi- 
ness than others, and are, therefore, more important than others ; and if we 
sacrifice a less important to a more important one, we add to our sum of 
happiness ; and we take away from that sum, when we sacrifice a more 
important pleasure to one of less importance. 

891. She springs : In some editions this line reads: From whom herself, 
and all she can enjoy. 

895. When being (is) curst, (and) extinctwn (is) loud implored. 

901. A-field: Across the fields. 

905. P^.oll : A noun. 



396 THE COMPLAINT. 

From cheat to cheat, impatient of a pause ; 

What is it ? — 'Tis the cradle of the soul, 

From instinct sent, to rock her in disease, 

Which her physician, reason, will not cure. 

A poor expedient ! yet thy best ; and while 910 

It mitigates thy pain, it owns it too. 

Such are Lorenzo's wretched remedies ! 
The weak have remedies ; the wise have joys. 
Superior wisdom is superior bliss. 

And what sure mark distinguishes the wise ? 915 

Consistent wisdom ever wills the same ; 
Thy fickle wish is ever on the wing. 
Sick of herself, is folly's character ; 
As wisdom's is, a modest self-applause. 

A change of evils is thy good supreme ; 920 

I^or, but in motion, canst thou find thy rest. 
Man's greatest strength is shewn in standing still. 
The fii'st sm'e symptom of a mind in health, 
Is rest of heart, and pleasure felt at home. 
False pleasm-e from abroad her joys imports ; 925 

Rich from within, and self-sustain'd, the true. 
The true is fix'd, and sohd as a rock ; 
Shpp'ry the false, and tossing as the wave. 
This, a wild wanderer on earth, hke Cain ; 
That, like the fabled, self-en amour'd boy, 930 

Home-contemplation her supreme delight : 
She dreads an interruption from without, 
Smit with her own condition ; and the more 
Intense she gazes, still it charms the more. 

921. A fine example of unexpected contrast in the words motion and 
rest. 

929. Like Cain : Gen. iv. 12 : "A fugitive and a vagabond shalt thou be 
in the earth." This was Cain's sentence. 

930. Self -enamour'^ d boy: The fabled Narcissus^ Wie beautiful son of the 
river-god Cephisus and the nymph Lyriope Seeing his image reflected in 
a fountain, he fell so exceedingly in love with it, that he pined away till he 
died. Subsequently he was changed into the flower that bears his name. 



NIGHT VIIT. 



THE HAPPY MAN. 



"No man is happy till he thinks, on earth 935 

There breathes not a more happy than himself: 
Then envy dies, and love o'eriiows on all ; 
And love o'erflowing makes an angel here. 
Such angels all, entitled to repose 

On Him who governs fate. Though tempest frowns, 940 

Though nature shakes, how soft to lean on Heav'n ! 
To lean on Him, on whom archangels lean ! 
With inward eyes, and silent as the grave. 
They stand collecting ev'ry b.eam of thought, 
Till their hearts kindle with divine delight : 945 

For all their thoughts, like angels, seen of old 
In Israel's di'eam, come from, and go to, heav'n : 
Hence, are they studious of sequester'd scenes ; 
While noise, and dissipation, comfort thee. 

Were all men happy, revelling would cease, 950 

That opiate for inquietude within. 
Lorenzo ! never man was truly blest. 
But it composed, and gave him such a cast, 
As folly might mistake for want of joy. 

A cast, unlike the triumph of the proud ; 955 

A modest aspect, and a smile at heart. 
for a joy from thy Philander's spring ! 
A spring perennial, rising in the breast. 
And permanent, as pure ! No turbid stream 
Of rapt'rous exultation, swelling high ; 960 

Which, hke land-floods, impetuous pour a while, 

940. Fate : The destiny of men. 

941. Soft: Pleasant. 

943. With inward eyes : With the mental e3^e directed inward, or, with 
thoughts directed inward to the operations of the soul. 

947. IsraeVs dream : Gen. xxviii. 12 : " And he dreamed, and behold a 
ladder set up on the earth, and the top of it reached to heaven, and behold 
the angels of God ascending and descending upon it." 



398 THE COMPLAINT. 

Then sink at once, and leave ns in the mire. 
What does the man, who transient joy prefers ? 
What, but prefer the bubbles to the stream ? 

Vain are all sudden sallies of dehght ; 965 

Convulsions of a weak distemper'd joy. 
Joy's a fix'd state ; a tenure, not a start. 
Bliss there is none, but unprecarious bliss : 
That is the gem : seU all and purchase that. 
Why go a begging to contingencies, 970 

Not gain'd with ease, nor safely loved, if gain'd ? 
At good fortuitous, draw back, and pause ; 
Suspect it : what thou canst ensure, enjoy ; 
And nought but what thou giv'st thyself, is sure. 
Reason perpetuates joy that reason gives, 975 

And makes it as immortal as herself: 
To mortals, nought immortal, but their worth. 

Worth, conscious worth ! should absolutely reign ; 

968. Unprecarious : Not uncertain, but enduring. 

972. Fortuitous : Subject to accident, not rehable. 

978. Worth should absolutely reign : We may illustrate this topic in the 
language of Dr. Seattle's Moral Science: 

Every gratification of which human nature is capable, may be compre- 
hended under one or other of these three classes : the pleasures of outward 
sense, the pleasures of imagination and intellect (that is, of taste and 
science) , and the pleasures that result from the right exercise of our moral 
powers. 

The delights that arise from the latter source, and from the approbation 
of conscience, are, of all gratifications, the most dignified. The more a 
man attaches himself to them, the more respectable he becomes ; and it is 
not possible for him to carry such attachment to excess. With disgust, or 
with pain, they are never attended :• they give a relish for other pleasures, 
by preserving the mind cheerful, and the body in health ; they are not in- 
consistent v\dth any innocent gratification — that is, they are consistent with 
all pleasures except those which bring pain and misery — they please 
intensely on reflection — are a perpetual source of comfort in adversity — 
become more exquisite the more we are accustomed to them — they are 
within the reach of every man, high and low, learned and ignorant — are 
suited to all times and places, and, so long as we retain our rationality, it I - 
not in the power of malice or of fortune to deprive us of them. To virtue, 
therefore, which is the right exercise of our moral powers, the character of 



NIGHT VIII. 399 

And other joys ask leave for their approach ; 

Nor, unexamined, ever leave obtain. 980 

Thou art all anarchy ; a mob of joys 

Wage war, and perish in intestine broils : 

Not the least promise of internal peace ! 

No bosom comfort, or unborrow'd bliss ! 

Thy thoughts are vagabonds ; all outward bound, 985 

'Mid sands, and rocks, and storms, to cruise for pleasure ; 

If gain'd, dear bought ; and better miss'd than gain'd. 

Much pain must expiate, what much pain procured. 

Fancy, and sense, from an infected shore. 

Thy cargo bring ; and pestilence the prize. 900 

Then, such thy thirst (insatiable thirst ! 

By fond indulgence but inflamed the more !) 

Fancy still cruises, when poor sense is tired. 

THE GUILT AND FOLLIES OF IMAGINATION. 

Imagination is the Paphian shop, 
Where feeble happiness, hke Vulcan, lame, 995 

Bids foul ideas, in their dark recess, 
And hot as hell (which kindled the black jSres) 

chief good does belong, which will appear still more evident when we 
consider that the hope of future felicity is the chief consolation of the pre- 
sent life, and that the virtuous alone can reasonably entertain that hope. 
As, on the other hand, vice, in the most prosperous condition, is subject to 
the pangs of a guilty conscience, and to the dreadful anticipation of future 
punishment, which are sufficient to destroy all earthly happiness. 

994. Paphian shop: Paphos is an ancient name of the island of Cyprus, 
where Venus was worshipped in a peculiar degree. Vulcan was the god 
of blacksmiths, skilled in arts connected with metals and fire. His lame- 
ness was owing to his being tumbled out of heaven by Jupiter for venturing 
to help his mother Juno, whom Jupiter had suspended in the air. To these 
circumstances our author alludes. 

The senses being tired by excessive indulgence (993) , feeble^ or enfeebled 
happiness^ or pleasure, goes to the shop of imagination, on ground devoted to 
Venus, the goddess of guilty pleasures. Pleasure is lame^ like Vulcan^ and 
proceeds to employ the black fires of foul ideas to form those fatal arrows 
which muraered Lorenzo's time^ &c. 



400 THE COMPLAINT. 

With wanton art, those fatal arrows form, 

Which murder all thy time, health, wealth, and fame. 

Wouldst thou receive them, other thoughts there are, 1000 

On angel wing, descending from above, 

Which these, with art divine, would counterwork, 

And form celestial armour for thy peace. 

In this is seen imagination's guilt : 
But who can count her follies ? She betrays thee, 1005 

To think in grandeur there is something great, 
For works of curious art, and ancient fame, 
Thy genius hungers, elegantly pain'd ; 
And foreign climes must cater for thy taste. 
Hence what disaster ! — Though the price was paid, 1010 

That persecuting priest, the Turk of Rome, 
Whose foot (ye gods !) though cloven, must be kiss'd, 
Detain'd thy dinner on the Latian shore ; 
(Such is the fate of honest protestants !) 

And poor magnificence is starved to death. 1015 

Hence just resentment, indignation, ire ! — 
Be pacified ; if outward things are great, 
'Tis magnanimity great things to scorn ; 
Pompous expenses, and parades august. 

And courts, that insalubrious soil to peace, 1020 

True happiness ne'er enter'd at an eye : 
True happiness resides in things unseen. 

1011. The Turk of Rome: The Pope of Rome, cruel as a Turk in the 
persecution of Protestant Christians, and arrogantly denaanding of his subor- 
dinate clergy and others, even crowned princes, the degrading homage of 
kissing his foot, even though^ as our author adds, cloven or split — that is (in 
allusion to some ridiculous poetic and pictorial illustrations), the foot of the 
devil. Tasso describes Satan in his Fourth Canto as possessing horns, and a 
tail, and cloven feet. Raphael and Michael Angelo, in their pictures, give a 
similar representation. The Pope is here represented as haughtily occasion- 
ing Lorenzo some inconvenience and privations, when examining the works 
of curious art on the Latin (or Roman) shore. 

1012. Ye gods : An exclamation less unbecoming to a Pagan than a 
Christian author. Dr. Young here unworthily copied the fashion of other 
poets of his day. 



NIGHT VIIT. 



4QX 



No smiles of fortune ever bless'd tlie bad, 

Nor can her frowns rob innocence of joys ; 

That jewel wanting, triple crowns are poor : 1025 

So tell his hohness, and be revenged. 

WHAT DESERVES THE NAME OE PLEASURE. 

Pleasure, we both agree, is man's chief good : 
Our only contest, what deserves the name. 
Give pleasure's name to nought, but what has pass'd 
Th' authentic seal of reason (which, like Yorke, 1030 

Demurs on what it passes) and defies 
The tooth of time ; when past, a pleasure still ; 
Dearer on trial, lovelier for its age. 
And doubly to be prized, as it j^romotes 
Our future, while it forms our present joy. 1035 

Some joys the future overcast ; and some 
Throw all their beams that way, and gild the tomb. 
Some joys endear eternity ; some give 
Abhorr'd annihilation dreadful charms. 

Are rival joys contending for thy choice? 1040 

Consult thy whole existence, and be safe : 
That oracle will put all doubt to flight. 
Short is the lesson, though my lecture long : 
Be good — and let Heav'n answer for the rest. 

Yet, with a sigh o'er all mankind, I grant, 1045 

In this our day of proof, our land of hope, 
The good man has his clouds that intervene ; 
Clouds, that obscure his sublunary day. 
But never conquer : Ev'n the best must own, 
Patience and resignation are the pillars 1050 

Of human peace on earth. The pillars, these : 
But those of Seth not more remote from thee, 

3026. His holiness : A title by which the Pope chooses to be described. 
1046. Proof: Trial or probation. 

1052. The pillars of Seth : We find mention made of these in Josephus' 
Antiquities. According to him, Seth (the son of Adam) and his posterity 



402 THE COMPLAINT. 

Till this heroic lesson tlioii hast learnt ; 

To fi-own at pleasure, and to smile in pain. 

Fned at the prospect of unclouded bliss, 1055 

Heav'n in reversion, hke the sun, as yet * 

Beneath th' horizon, cheers us in this world : 

It sheds, on souls susceptible of hght. 

The glorious dawn of our eternal day. 

'Thi-s (says Lorenzo) is a fair harangue : 1060 

But can harangues blow back strong nature's stream ? 
Or stem the tide Heav'n pushes through our veins. 
Which sweeps away man's impotent resolves, 
And lays his labour level with the world V 

Themselves men make their comments on mankind ; 1065 
And think nought is, but what they find at home : 
Thus weakness to chimera turns the truth. 
ISTothing romantic has th« muse prescribed. 

Above, Lorenzo saw the man of earth, 
The mortal man ; and wretched was the sight. 1070 

To balance that, to comfort and exalt, 
Now see the man immortal : him I mean, 
Who lives as s-uch ; whose heart, full bent on heav'n, 

were inventors of the art of astronomy, and made important observations, 
which they sought to preserve by inscribing them upon tvv'o pillars, which 
they erected for the purpose in the land of Siriad — the one of brick, and 
the other of stone, as Adam had given them to understand that the earth 
should be destroyed at one time by the force of fire, and, at another, by the 
violence and quantity of water. It was supposed that, in case the pillar of 
brick should be destroyed by the flood, the pillar of stone would survive it. 
Josephus says it was standing in his own day. 

But the translator of Josephus, in a note, declares the opinion that a 
mistake was made by Josephus, attributing to Seth, the son of Adam, what 
should have been ascribed to Seth, or Sesostris, king of Egypt, statin-g that 
such pillars could not have resisted the Deluge, while there is evidence that 
the like pillars of the Egyptian Seth, or Sesostris, were extant after the 
flood in the land of Siriad, and, perhaps, in the time of Josephus too. 

1056. In reversion: In prospective possession. The figure that follows 
cannot be too much admired for its appropriateness. 

1067. To chimera^ &c. : To that which is paradoxical and incredible. 

1069. Move : In a former " Night." 



NIGHT VIII. 403 

Leans all that way, his bias to the stai-s. 

The world's dark shades, in contrast set, shall raise 1075 

His lustre more ; though bright, without a foil : 

Observe his awful portrait, and admire ; 

'Nov stop at wonder : imitate, and live. 

THE MAN WHO LIVES AS AN IMMORTAL, CONTRASTED WITH THE 
WORLDLING. 

Some angel guide my pencil, while I draw, 
What nothing less than angel can exceed, 1080 

A man on earth devoted to the skies ; 
Like ships in sea, while in, above the world. 

With aspect mild and elevated eye, 
Behold him seated on a mount serene. 

Above the fog-s of sense, and passion's storm ; 1085 

All the black cares, and tumults, of this life 
(Like harmless thunders, breaking at his feet) 
Excite his pity, not impair his peace. 
Earth's genuine sons, the scepter'd, and the slave, 
A mingled mob ! a wand'ring herd ! he sees, 1090 

Bewilder'd in the vale ; in all unhke ! 
His full reverse in all ! What higher praise ? 
What stronger demonstration of the right ? 

The present all their care ; the future, his. 
When pubhc welfare calls, or private want, 1095 

They give to fame ; his bounty he conceals. 
Their virtues varnish nature ; his exalt. 
Mankind's esteem they court ; and he, his own. 

1076. Without a foil: Without anything placed in contrast or oppo- 
sition. 

1082. An ingenious comparison. It is almost immediately followed by 
another, which is finely illustrative of the subject, and carried tut with 
great correctness and delicacy of taste. 

1091. In all unlike (himself) . 

1098. His own: The author might more properly ha\e assumed higher 
ground, and said that he courted the esteem of God. 



I 



404 THE COMPLAINT. 

Theii-s, tlie wild chase of false felicities ; 

His, the composed possession of the true. 1100 

Alike throughout is his consistent piece, 

All of one colour, and an even thread ; 

"While party-coloured shreds of happiness, 

With hideous gaps between, patch up for them 

A madman's robe ; each puff of fortune blows 1105 

The tatters by, and shews their nakedness. 

He sees with other eyes than thehs ; where they 
Behold a sun, he spies a Deity : 
What makes them only smile, makes him adore. 
Where they see mountains, he but atoms sees : 1110 

An empire, in his balance, weighs a gi-ain. 
They things terrestrial worship, as divine ; 
His hopes immortal blow them by, as dust. 
That dims his sight, and shortens his survey, 
Which longs, in infinite, to lose all bound. 1115 

Titles and honours (if they prove liis fate) 
He lays aside to find his dignity : 
No dignity they find in aught besides. 
They triumph in externals (which conceal 
Man's real gloiy) proud of an eclipse. 1120 

Himself too much he prizes to be proud. 
And nothing thinks so great in man, as man. 
Too dear he holds his int'rest, to neglect 
Another's welfare, or his right invade ; 

Their int'rest, like a Hon, lives on prey. 1125 

They kindle at the shadow of a wrong : 

1108, He spies a Deity : He spies the work, the evidence, the glory of its 
Divine Author. 

1113-15. The sublimity of the thought should here be noticed. 

1116. If they prove his fate: If they should be allotted to him. 

1123. His interest: His interest is contrasted vv^ith their interest (1125). 
In the first instance, the word is taken in a large, absolute, and compre- 
hensive sense ; in the other, it is used in a limited sense, to mean that it is 
supposed by them to be their interest, or for their advantage, to invade the 
rights of others. 



NIGHT VIII. 405 

Wrong he sustains with temper, looks on heav'n, 

Nor stoops to think his injurer his foe ; 

Kought, but what wounds his virtue, w^ounds his peace. 

A cover'd heart their character defends ; 1130 

A cover'd heart denies him half his praise. 

With nakedness his innocence agrees ; 

While their broad foliage testifies theh fall. 

Their no-joys end, where his full feast begins ; 

His joys create, theirs murder, futm'e bliss. 1135 

To triumph in existence, his alone ; 

And his alone, triumphantly to think 

His true existence is not yet begun. 

His glorious course was, yesterday, complete : 

Death, then, was welcome ; yet life still is sweet. 1140 

THE UNDAUNTED BREAST. 

But nothing charms Lorenzo, like the firm 
Undaunted breast — And whose is that high praise ? 
They yield to pleasure, though they danger brave, 

1130-31. The meaning is, that their character appears best when their 
hearts are most covered so as not to be observed or known ; while his 
character does not receive half the admiration it is entitled to, if his heart, 
his springs of action, his dispositions, are concealed from o-ur view, or do not 
come to our knowledge. Then follows a happy allusion (1132-33) to our 
first parents in their primitive and fallen state. 

1143-44. They yield to pleasure: The duty that is exercised in resisting 
the solicitation of evils that can scarcely be said to be yet vices, though they 
are soon to become vices, and are, as yet, to our unreflecting thought, only 
forms of gaiety and social kindness, is truly one of the most important 
duties of self-command. It is not the endurance of pain that is the hardest 
trial to which fortitude can be exposed : it is the calm endurance^ if I may 
so term it, of the very smiles of pleasure herself — an endurance that is 
easy only to the noble love of future as well as present virtue — that can 
resist what it is delightful to crowds to do, as it resists the less terrible 
forms of evil from which every individual of the crowd would shrink. The 
courage of those who have strength only to resist what is commonly termed 
fear, is a courage that is scarcely worthy of the name — as little worthy of 
it as the partial courage of the soldier on his own element, if on a different 
element he were to tremble when exposed to a shipwreck ; or of the 



406 THE COMPLAINT. 

And shew no fortitude, but in the field : 

If there they shew it, 'tis for glory shewn; 1145 

Nor will that cordial always man their hearts, 

A cordial his sustains, that cannot fail : 

By pleasure unsubdued, unbroke by pain. 

He shares in that Omnipotence he trusts ; 

All -bearing, all-attempting, till he falls; 1150 

And when he falls, writes VICI on his shield : 

From magnanimity, all fear above : 

From noble recompense, above applause ; 

Which owes to man's short out-look all its charms. 

Backward to credit what he never felt, 1155 

Lorenzo cries — ' Where shines this miracle ? 
From what root rises this immortal man ?' 
A root that grows not in Lorenzo's ground ; 
The root dissect, nor wonder at the flow'r. 

THE CHRISTIAN FOLLOWS NATURE. 

He follows nature (not like thee !) and shews us 1160 

An uninverted system of a man. 
His appetite wears reason's golden cham. 
And finds, in due restraint, its luxury. 
His passion, like an eagle well reclaim'd, 

seaman if he were, in like manner, to tremble at any of the common perils 
to which life can be exposed on land. The most strenuo-us combatants in 
the tumult of warfares, may be cowards, or worse than cowards, in the 
calm, moral fight. His is the only genuine strength of heart who resists, 
ijot the force of a few fears only to which even in the eyes of the world it 
is ignominious for man to yield, but the force of every temptation to which 
it would be unworthy of man to yield, even though the world, in its capri- 
cious allotments of honour and shame, might not have chosen to regard with 
ignominy that peculiar species of cowardice "by pleasure unsubdued," &c.; 
1148-51.— Brownh Phil. Mind, iii. 540. 

1151. Vici: I have conquered. An allusion to Caesar's despatch to the 
Roman senate, Veni, Vidi, Vici. 

1160. Not like thee: Compare 838-9. 

1164. Reclaim'd: Tamed and trained. 



NIGHT VIII. 407 

Is taught to fly at nought, but infinite. 1165 

Patient his hope, unanxious is his care, 

His caution fearless, and his grief (if grief 

The gods ordain) a stranger to despair. 

And why ? — Because affection, more than meet. 

His wisdom leaves not disengaged from heav'n. 1170 

Those secondary goods that smile on earth. 

He, loving in proportion, loves in peace. 

They most the world enjoy, who least admire. 

His understanding 'scapes the common cloud 

Of fumes, arising from a boiling breast. llVS 

His head is clear, because his heart is cool, 

By worldly competitions uninflamed. 

The mod'rate movements of his soul admit ^ 

Distinct ideas, and matured debate. 

An eye impartial, and an even scale ; 1180 

Whence judgment sound, and unrepenting choice. 

Thus, in a double sense, the good are wise ; 

On its own dunghill, wiser than the world. 

What then, the world ? It must be doubly weak : 

Strange truth ! as soon would they believe their creed. 1185 

Yet thus it is ; nor otherwise can be : 
So far from aught romantic what I sing. 
Bliss has no being, virtue has no strength, 
But from the prospect of immortal life. 

Who thinks earth all, or (what weighs just the same) 1190 
Who cares no farther, must prize what it yields ; 
Fond of its fancies, proud of its parades. 
Who thinks earth nothing, can't its charms admire ; 

1168. The gods ordain: A Pagan mode of expression, used in accommo- 
dation, perhaps, to Lorenzo's mode of talking, but unworthy of a Christian 
poem, the gods of the heathen being no gods. 

1184. Rather a low comparison from the barnyard, and only to be vin- 
dicated by considering the author's design, which was to place the me-n of 
the world in a degraded position, as compared with the aspirant for the 
Christian's immortality. 

1185. As soon would they (the men of the world) believe their creed (the 
creed of Christians) . 



408 THE COMPLAINT. 

He can't a foe, though most malignant, hate, 

Because that hate would prove his greater foe. 1195 

'Tis hard for them (yet who so loudly boast 

Good will to men ?) to love their dearest fiiend : 

For may not he invade theu* good supreme. 

Where the least jealousy turns love to gall ? 

All shines to them, that for a season shines. 1200 

Each act, each thought he questions, ' TSHiat its weight. 

Its colom- what, a thousand ages hence V 

And what it there appeai-s, he deems it now. 

Hence, pure are the recesses of his soul. 

The godlike man has nothing to conceal. 1205 

His YiTtne constitutionally deep. 

Has habit's fii-mness, and affection's flame : 

Angels alhed, descend to feed the &e ; 

And death, which others slays, makes him a god. 

THE MAN OF THE WORLD DISDAINS THE CHRISTIAN. 

And now, Lorenzo, bigot of this world! 1210 

Wont to disdain poor bigots caught by heav'n ! 
Stand by thy scorn, and be reduced to nought : 
For what art thou ? — Thou boaster ! while thy glare, 
Thy gaudy gi-andem-, and mere worldly worth, 
Like a broad mist, at distance strikes us most ; 1215 

And, like a mist, is nothing when at hand ; 
His merit, like a mountain, on approach, 
Swells more, and rises nearer to the skies, 

1194-97. He can't hate a /oe, &c. 'Tis hard for ^Aew, &c., to love their 
Nearest friend. 

1200-1. Them and he are emphatic. 

1209. A god: Superhuman. Raises him to a more exalted condition than 
he occupies on earth. 

1211. Caught by heav'n: Attracted by its glories. 

1215-18. The comparison of the worldly worth of Lorenzo to mist^ and of 
the solid merit of the heavenly-minded man to a mountain, which swells on 
our approach, and rises nearer to the skies, deserves the highest admi- 
ration. 



NiaHT VIII. 40& 

By promise, now, and, by possession soon 

(Too soon, too much, it cannot be) bis own. 122 

From this thy just annihilation rise, 
Lorenzo ! rise to something by reply. 
The world, thy chent, listens, and expects ; 
And longs to crown thee with immortal praise. 
Canst thou be silent ? No ; for wit is thine ; 122: 

And wit talks most, when least she has to say, 
And reason interrupts not her career. 

She'll say That mists above the mountains rise 

And, with a thousand pleasantries, amuse : 

She'll sparkle, puzzle, flutter, raise a dust, 1230 

And fly con\dction, in the dust she raised. 

WISDOM AND WIT DISTINGUISHED. 

Wit, how delicious to man's dainty taste ! 
'Tis precious, as the vehicle of sense ; 
But, as its substitute, a dire disease. 

Pernicious talent ! flattered by the world, 1235 

By the bhnd world, which thinks the talent rare. 
Wisdom is rare, Lorenzo ! wit abounds : 
Passion can give it ; sometimes wine insphes 
The lucky flash ; and madness rarely fails. 
Whatever cause the sphit strongly stirs, 1240 

Confei's the bays, and rivals thy renown. 
For thy renown, 'twere well, was this the woi"st ; 
Chance often hits it ; and, to pique thee more, 
See dulness, blundering on \dvacities. 

Shakes her sage head at the calamity, 1245 

Which has exposed, and let her down to thee. 
But wisdom, awful wisdom ! which inspects, 
Discerns, compares, weighs, separates, infers, 
Seizes the right, and holds it to the last ; 

1241. Confers the bays : Confers distinction; the branches of the laurel- 
tfee, wrought into a garland, having been presented by the ancients as aa 
honorary reward of success in their games. 
lb 



410 THE COMPLAINT. 

How rare ! In senates, synods, sought in vain ; 1250 

Or if there found, 'tis sacred to the few; 

While a lewd prostitute to multitudes, 

Frequent, as fatal, wit. In civil life. 

Wit makes an enterpriser ; sense, a man. 

Wit hates authority, commotion loves, 1255 

And thinks herself the lightning of the storm. 

In states, 'tis dangerous ; in religion, death. 

Shall we turn Christian, when the dull believe ? 

Sense is our helmet, wit is but the plume ; 

The plume exposes, 'tis our helmet saves. 1260 

Sense is the diamond, weighty, sohd, sound : 

When cut by wit, it casts a brighter beam ; 

Yet wit apart, it is a diamond still. 

Wit mdow'd of o'ood sense, is worse than nou2:lit ; 

It hoists more sail to run against a rock. 1205 

Thus, a half-Chesterfield is quite a fool ; 

Whom dull fools scorn, and bless their want of wit. 

A WARNING AGAINST THE SIRENS' SONG. 

How ruinous the rock I warn thee shun, 

1254. Jin enterpriser : A bold and reckless adventurer, ready to undertake 
a hazardous enterprise. 

1257. In religion, death : And yet who inore witty than Dr Young, and 
even on religious subjects? But he evidently refers to infidel wit— to wit 
uncontrolled by religious principle, and opposed to it. It may here be 
observed, however, that the religious impression of our author's "Night 
Thoughts" would have been deeper if his wit had been more sparingly em- 
ployed. It would, however, have had in that case, perhaps, fewer readers 
among men of the world. 

1259. Who does not admire the fine metaphor of the helmet and plume, 
also of the diamond in 1261, but we think the eifect of these is injured by 
appending so soon the metaphor of a vessel (1265). 

1266. j1 half- Chesterfield: One who has his wit, but only half his sense 

1269. Sirens: Anthon describes them as two maidens, celebrated in fable, 
who occupied an island of Ocean, where they sat in a mead close to the 
sea-shore, and with their melodious voices so charm.ed those that were 



NIGHT VIII. 411 

Where Sirens sit to sing thee to thy fate 1 

A joy, in which our reason bears no part, 1270 

Is but a sorrow, tickling, ere it stings. 

Let not the cooings of the world allure thee ; 

Which of her lovei's ever found her true ? 

Happy I of this bad world who little know ! — 

And yet, we much must know her, to be safe. 1275 

To know the world, not love her, is thy point : 

She gives but httle, nor that little, long. 

There is, I grant, a triumph of the pulse ; 

A dance of spirits, a mere froth of joy, 

Our thoughtless agitation's idle child, 1280 

That mantles high, that sparkles, and expires, 

Leaving the soul more vapid than before ; 

An animal ovation ! such as holds 

No commerce with our reason, but subsists 

On juices, thro' the well-toned tubes, well strain'd; 1285 

A. nice machine ! scarce ever tuned aright : 

And v\^hen it jars — thy Sirens sing no more, 

Thy dance is done ; the demi-god is thrown 

(Short apotheosis !) beneath the man, 

In coward gloom immersed, or fell despair. 1290 

THE PYRAMID OF HAPPINESS. 

Art thou yet dull enough despah to dread, 
And startle at destruction ? If thou art. 
Accept a buckler, take it to the field ; 

sailing by, that they forgot home and everything relating to it, and aboc'.e 
with these maidens till they perished from the impossibility of taking 
nourishment, and their bones lay whitening on the strand. 

1281. Mantles high: Kises high on the surface. 

1283. Ovation : Rejoicing. The term strictly refers to a lesser triu^mph, 
in which a Roman commander, after an easy victory over foreign enemies, 
or over slaves, made a public and joyful entrance into the city of Rome, not 
in a chariot, as in the greater triumph, but on horseback, or on foot. 

1289. Apotheosis: Deification. Alluding to the Roman practice of raising 
distinguished men, at death, to the rank of gods or derai-gods. 



412 THE COMPLAINT. 

(A field of battle is this mortal life !) 

When danger threatens, lay it on thy heart ; 1295 

A single sentence proof against the world : 

' Soul, body, fortune ! ev'ry good pertains 

To one of these : but prize not all ahke : 

The goods of fortune to thy body's health, 

Body to soul, and soul submit to God.' 1300 

"Wouldst thou build lasting happiness ? Do this : 

Th' inverted pyi-amid can never stand. 

Is this truth doubtful ? It outshines the sun ; 
Nay, the sun shines not, but to shew us this. 
The single lesson of mankind on earth. 1305 

And yet — Yet, what ? No news ! Mankind is mad ! 
Such mighty numbers list against the right, 
(And what can't numbers when bewitch'd achieve !) 
They talk themselves to something like behef. 
That all earth's joys are theirs : as Athens' fool 1310 

Grinn'd fi-om the port, on ev'ry sail his own. 

THE world's mirth. 

They grin ; but wherefore ? and how long the laugh ? 
Half ignorance, their mirth ; and half a he ; 
To cheat the world, and cheat themselves, they smile. 
Hard either task ! The most abandon'd own, 1315 

That others, if abandon'd, are undone : 
Then, for themselves, the moment reason wakes, 
(And Pro^idence denies it long repose) 
how laborious is their gaiety ! 
They scarce can swallow their ebullient spleen, 1320 

1299. The goods of fortune suhmit to thy body'' s health: That is, prize the 
former less than the latter. 

1310. Athens' fool: Thrasyllus, who, being seized with a strange infatu- 
ation, left his abode in the city, and took up his residence in the Piraeus, and 
there regarded as his own all the vessels that entered and passed out of the 
harbour, rejoicing greatly in their safe arrival. 

1320. Ebullient. : Gushing or boiling up. 



NIGHT VIII. 413 

Scarce muster patience to support the farce, 

And pump sad laughter, till the curtain falls. 

Scarce, did I say ? Some cannot sit it out ; 

Oft their own daring hands the curtain di'aw, 

And shew us what their joy, by their despair. 1325 

The clotted hair ! gored breast ! blaspheming eye ! 
Its impious fuiy still ahve in death ! — 
Shut, shut the shocking scene — But Heav'n denies 
A cover to such guilt ; and so should man. 
Look round, Lorenzo ! see the reeking blade. 1330 

Th' envenom'd phial, and the fatal ball ; 
The strangling cord, and suffocating stream ; 
The loathsome rottenness, and foul decays 
From raging riot (slower suicides !) 

And pride in these more execrable still ! 1335 

How horrid all to thought ! — But horrors, these, 
That vouch the truth ; and aid my feeble song. 

THE christian's JOY. 

From vice, sense, fancy, no man can be blest : 
Bliss is too great to lodge within an hour. 
When an immortal being aims at bliss, 1340 

Duration is essential to the name. 
O for a joy from reason ! joy from that. 
Which makes man, man ; and exercised aright. 
Will make him more : a bounteous joy ! that gives 
And promises; that weaves, with art divine, 1345 

The richest prospect into present peace : 
A joy ambitious ! joy in common held 
With thrones ethereal, and their greater far : 

1322. Pump sad laughter : A striking form of expression to indicate the 
hypocrisy of their mirth, and the difficulty of appearing happy. 

1324. The curtain draw that separates them from the invisible world. 
The phrase is derived from the practice of drawing a curtain, or letting it 
fall before the stage in a theatre, when the play is concluded. The act of 
suicide is here indicated, and more fully described in the next paragraph. 



414 THE COMPLAINT. 

A joy high pri^^leged from chance, time, death ! 

A joy, which death shall double, judgment crown ! 1350 

Crown'd higher, and still higher, at each stage, 

Through blest eternity's long day ; yet still. 

Not more remote from sorrow, than from Him, 

Whose lavish hand, whose love stupendous, poure 

So much of Deity on guilty dust. 1355 

There, O my Lucia ! may I meet thee there, 

Where not thy presence can improve my bliss ! 

THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN A WISE MAN AND A FOOL. 

Affects not this the sages of the world ? 
Can nought affect them, but what fools them too ? 
Eternity depending on an hour, 1360 

Makes serious thought man's wisdom, joy, and praise. 
ISTor need you blush (though sometimes your designs 
May shun the light) at your designs on heav'n : 
Sole point ! where over-bashful is youi- blame. 
Ai'e you not wise ? You know you are : yet hear 1365 

One truth, amid your num'rous schemes, mislaid, 
Or overlook'd, or thrown aside,, if seen : 
' Our schemes to plan by this vrorld, or the next, 
Is the sole difference between wise and fool.' 
All worthy men will weigh you in the scale ; 1370 

What wonder, then, if they pronounce you light ? 
Is their esteem alone not worth your care ? 
Accept my simple scheme of common sense : 
Thus, save your fame, and make two worlds jour own. 
The world replies not; — but the world persists ; 1375 

And puts the cause off to the longest day, 
Planning evasions for the day of doom. 
So far, at that re-hearing, from redi-ess. 
They then turn witnesses against themselves. 

1356. My Lucia : The author's deceased wife. 

1368. To plan our schemes by this world or the next, &c. 



NIGHT VIII. 415 

Hear that, Lorenzo ! nor be wise to-morrow : 1380 

Haste, haste I a man, hj natm-e, is in haste ; 
For who shall answer for another hour ? 
'Tis highly prudent, to make one sure friend ; 
And that thou canst not do this side the skies. 

Ye sons of earth ! (nor wilhng to be more !) 1385 

Since verse you think from priestcraft somewhat free, 
Thus, in an age so gay, the muse plain truths 
(Truths, which at church you might have heard in prose) 
Has ventured into hght ; well pleased the verse 
Should be forgot, if you the truths retain ; 1390 

And crown her with your welfare, not your praise. 
But praise she need not fear : I see my fate ; 
And headlong leap, hke Curtius, down the gulf. 
Since many an ample volume, mighty tome, 
Must die ! and die unwept ; O thou minute, 1395 

Devoted page ! go forth among thy foes ; 
Go, nobly proud of martyrdom for truth. 
And die a double death. Mankind incensed, 
Denies thee long to hve : nor shalt thou rest. 
When thou art dead : in Styo-ian shades arraio-u'd 1400 

13S-9. Ventured to bring into light- 

1393. Like Cwrtius : The story drawn from Livy (Bk. vii. 6) is thus re- 
lated in an abbreviated form by Anthon : The ground n-ear the middle of the 
Forum (at Rome) , in consequence either of an earthquake, or of some 
other violent cause, sank down to an immense depth, forming a vast aper- 
ture ; nor could the gulf be filled up by all the earth which they could 
throw into it. At last the soothsayers declared that if they wished the 
commonwealth to be everlasting, they must devote to this chasm what con- 
stituted the principal strength of the Roman people. Curtius, on hearing 
the answer, demanded of his countrymen whether they possessed anything 
so valuable as their arms a-nd their courage. They yielded a silent assent 
to the question put them by the heroic youth, whereupon, having arrayed 
himself in full armour, and mounted his horse, he plunged into the chasm, 
and the people threw after him their offerings, and quantities of the fruits 
of the earth. Valerius Maximus states that the earth closed immediately 
over him. Livy, however, speaks of a lake occupying the spot, called 
Lacus Curtius. 

1400. Stygian shades arraign'' d : An allusion to the gloomy Vv^orld of the 



416 THE COMPLAINT. 

By Lucifer, as traitor to his throne ; 

And bold blasphemer of his friend, — the World : 

The world, whose legions cost him slender pay. 

And volunteers around his banner swarm : 

Prudent as Prussia, in her zeal for Gaul. 1405 

' Are all, then, fools V Lorenzo cries. — Yes, all, 
But such as hold this doctrine (new to thee ;) 
' The mother of true wisdom, is the will :' 
The noblest intellect, a fool without it. 

World-wisdom much has done, and more may do, 1410 

In arts and sciences, in wars and peace ; 
But art and science, like thy wealth, will leave thee. 
And make thee twice a beggar at thy death. 
This is the most indulgence can afford ; — 
'Thy wisdom all can do, but — make thee wise.' 1415 

Nor think this censure is severe on thee ; 
Satan, thy master, I dare call a dunce. 

dead, the region over which Pluto presided, and where, according to the 
classical fable, Minos, vEacus, and Rhadamanthus allotted to each of the 
dead brought before their tribunal, the bliss or pain of their future exist- 
ence. Lucifer (a name applied to Satan) is represented as bringing a charge 
against the "Night Thoughts," as traitor to his throne. Compare 1417. 

1408. The idea here conveyed seems to be this : We cannot be truly wise 
without an exercise of the will in the right direction, or unless it choose 
right objects of pursuit. 

1416. On thee (alone). 



■^Mx 



THE CONSOLATION. 



NIGHT IX. 



THE CONSOLATION. 

CONTAINING, AMONG- OTHER THINGS, 

1. A MORAL SURVEY OF THE NOCTURNAL HEAVENS. 

2. A NIGHT-ADDRESS TO THE DEITY. 



SnEribi In iljt Mtt nf Jl^inraMk. 



Fatis contraria Fata rependens. — Virgil. 



AS when a traveller, a long day past 
In painful search of what he cannot find. 
At night's approach, content with the next cot, 
There ruminates, a while, his labour lost ; 
Then cheers his heart with what his fate affords, • 5 

And chants his sonnet to deceive the time, 
Till the due season calls him to repose : 
Thus I, long travell'd in the ways of men, 
And dancing, with the rest, the giddy maze, 

1. By this impressive simile, Dr. Young forcibly describes his advanc- 
ing years, and a portion of his sad experience in the affairs of human life. 
He was about sixty years of age when he began to write the " Night 
Thoughts," and occupied in their composition some three or four years. 



420 THE CONSOLATION. 

Where disappointment smiles at hope's career ; 10 

Warn'd by the languor of life's ev'ning ray, 

At length have housed me in an humble shed ; 

Where, future wand'ring banish'd from my thought, 

And waiting, patient, the sweet hour of rest, 

I chase the moments with a serious song. 15 

Song sooths our pains ; and age has pains to sooth. 

When age, care, crime, and friends embraced at heart, 
Torn from my bleeding breast, and death's dark shade 
Which hovei-s o'er me, quench th' ethereal fire ; 
Canst thou, O Night ! indulge one labom* more? 20 

One labour more indulge ! then sleep, my strain ! 
Till, haply, waked by Raphael's golden lyre. 
Where night, death, age, care, crime, and sorrow, cease ; 
To bear a part in everlasting lays ; 

Though fai-, far higher set, in aim, I trust, 25 

Symphonious to this humble prelude here. 

Has not the muse asserted pleasures pm-e, 
Like those above exploding other joys ? 
Weigh what was urg'd, Lorenzo ! fairly weigh ; 
And tell me, hast thou cause to triumph still I 30 

I think thou wilt forbear a boast so bold. 
But if, beneath the favom- of mistake. 
Thy smile's sincere ; not more sincere can be 
Lorenzo's smile, than my compassion for him. 
The sick in body call for aid ; the sick 35 

In mind are covetous of more disease ; 
And when at worst, they dream themselves quite well. 
To know oui-selves diseased, is half our cure. 
When natui'e's blush by custom is wiped off. 
And conscience, deaden'd by repeated strokes, 40 

Has into mannei-s naturahzed our crimes, 

13. It is supposed that the expression of this, and of similar sentiments 
in his writings, was made use of by the British ministry as a pretext for 
withdrawing from our author such preferment as he was not unfrequently 
aspiring after subsequent to this period. 

26. Symphonious: Of similar sound, agreeing to. 



NIGHT IX. 421 

The curse of curses is, our cui*se to love ; 

To triumpli in the blackness of our guilt, 

(As Indians glory in the deepest jet ;) 

And throw aside our senses with our peace. 4i> 

But, grant no guilt, no shame, no least alloy ; 
Grant joy and glory quite unsulhed shone ; 
Yet, still, it ill deserves Lorenzo's heart. 
No joy, no glory, ghtters in thy sight, 

But, through the thin partition of an hour, 50 

I see its sables wove by destiny ; 
And that in sorrow buried ; this, in shame ; 
While howhng fuiies ring the doleful knell ; 
And conscience, now so soft thou scai-ce canst hear 
Her whisper, echoes her eternal peal. 55 

THE UNIVERSAL MORTALITY OF MAN. 

Where the prime actors of the last year's scene ; 
Their port so proud, their buskin, and their plume ? 
How many sleep, who kept the world awake 
With lustre, and with noise ! Has death proclaim'd 
A truce, and hung his sated lance on high ? 60 

'Tis brandish'd still ; nor shall the present year 

51. Sables: Funeral robes. Wove by destiny : An allusion to the Parcae, 
Night I. 380. 

53. Furies : An allusion is here made to certain female deities among the 
ancient Greeks and Romans, whose office it was to arraign or punish both 
gods and men for transgressions against those they were bound to esteem and 
reverence. It was the office of one of them to produce fatal epidemics and 
contagion; of another, to excite to the cruelties and devastations of war ; 
of another, to originate insanity and provoke murders. They were repre- 
sented with vipers twining among their hair, with a terrific countenance, 
with a torch of discord or vengeance in one hand, and a scourge of snakes 
in the other, and clothed in dark and blood-stained robes. 

57. Buskin : A very high shoe, or low boot, worn by tragedians on the 
stage. Among the ancients it was sometimes made with a very thick sole, 
to raise the actors to the stature of persons whom they represented. The 
plume, or large feather; often that of the ostrich was also worn by them as 
an ornament. It is often put for pride. 



422 THE CONSOLATION. 

Be more tenacious of lier human leaf, 
Or spread of feeble life a thimier fall. 

But needless monuments to wake the thought ; 
Life's gayest scenes speak man's mortaUty ; 05 

Though in a style more florid, full as plain, 
As mausoleums, pyramids, and tombs. 
What are our noblest ornaments, but deaths 
Turn'd flatterers of life, in paint, or marble. 
The well-stain'd canvass, or the featured stone ? 10 

Our fathei"s grace, or rather haunt, the scene : 
Joy peoples her pavihon from the dead. 

' Profest diversions ! cannot these escape V — ■ 
Far from it : These present us with a shroud ; 
And talk of death, hke garlands o'er a grave. ^5 

As some bold plunderers, for buried wealth, 
"We ransack tombs for pastime ; from the dust 
Call up the sleeping hero ; bid him tread 
The scene for om- amusement : how hke gods 
We sit ; and, wrapt in immortality. 80 

Shed gen'rous tears on wretches born to die ; 
Their fate deploring, to forget our own ! 
What, all the pomps and triumphs of our lives, 
But legacies in blossom ? Our lean soil, 

Luxuriant grown, and rank in vanities, 85 

From friends interr'd beneath ; a rich manure ! 
Like other worms, we banquet on the dead : 
Like other worms shall we crawl on, nor know 
Our present frailties, or approaching fate ? ^ 

THE WORLD, A GRAVE. 

Lorenzo ! such the glories of the world ! 9,0 

What is the world itself ? thy world ? — A grave ! 
Where is the dust that has not been alive ? 

62. 0/ human leaf: Human beings are here represented under the figure 
of a leaf faUing in the autumn. 

68. Noblest ornaments : Paintings and sculpture. 



NIGHT IX. 423 

The spade, the plough, disturb our ancestors ; 

From human mould we reap our daily bread. 

The globe around earth's hollow surface shakes, 95 

And is the ceiling of her sleeping sons. 

O'er devastation we bhnd revels keep ; 

While buried towns suj^port the dancer's heel. 

The moist of human frame the sun exhales ; 

Winds scatter through the mighty void, the dry ; 100 

Earth repossesses part of what she gave, 

And the freed spirit mounts on wings of fire ; 

Each element partakes our scatter'd spoils ; 

As nature, wide, our ruins spread : man's death 

Inhabits all things, but the thought of man. 105 

EMPIRES DIE. 

Nor man alone ; his breathing bust expires. 
His tomb is mortal ; empires die. Where now. 
The Roman ? Greek ? They stalk, an empty name ! 
Yet few regard them in this useful light ; 
Though half our learning is their epitaph. 110 

When down thy vale, unlock'd by midnight thought. 
That loves to wander in thy sunless realms, 
O death ! I stretch ray view ; what visions rise ! 
What triumphs ! toils imperial ! arts divine ! 
In wither'd laurels ghde before my sight ! 115 

What lengths of far-famed ages, billow'd high 
With human agitation, roll along 
In unsubstantial images of air ! 
The melancholy ghosts of dead renown, 

Whisp'ring faint echoes of the world's applause, 120 

With penitential aspect, as they pass. 
All point at earth, and hiss at human pride. 
The wisdom of the wise, and prancings of the great. 

99. The moist (parts). 

110. Half our learning is their epitaph: Consists of the memorials of 
i^hat they formerly were and did. 



424 THE CONSOLATION-. 



THE MORTALITY OF THE DELUGE. 



But, Lorenzo ! far the rest above, 
Of ghastly nature, and enormous size, 125 

One form assaults my sight, and chills my blood, 
And shakes my frame. Of one departed world 
I see the mighty shadow : oozy wreath 
And dismal sea-weed crown her ; o'er her urn 
Reclined, she weeps her desolated realms, 130 

And bloated sons ; and, weeping, prophesies 
Another's dissolution, soon, into flames. 
But, like Cassandra, prophesies in vain ; 
In vain, to many ; not, I trust, to thee. 

For, know'st thou not, or art thou loath to know, 135 

The great decree, the counsel of the skies ? 
Deluge and conflagration, dreadful pow'rs ! 
Prime ministers of vengeance ! Chain'd in caves 
Distinct, apart, the giant furies roar ; 

Apart ; or, such their horrid rage for ruin, 140 

In mutual conflict would they rise, and wage 
Eternal war, till one was quite devour'd. 
But not for this ordain'd their boundless rage : 
When Heav'n's inferior instruments of wi-ath. 
War, famine, pestilence, are found too weak 145 

To scourge a world for her enormous crimes. 
These are let loose, alternate : down they rush. 
Swift and tempestuous, from th' eternal throne, 
With irresistible commission arm'd, 

The world, in vain corrected, to destroy, 150 

And ease creation of the shocking scene. 

133. Like Cassandra : She was the daughter of Priam, king of Troy, and 
Hecuba. Beloved by Apollo, she promised to listen to his addresses, pro- 
vided he would grant her the knowledge of futurity. Having obtained this 
knowledge, she was regardless of her promise, and Apollo, in revenge, de- 
termined that no credit should be given to her predictions. Accordingly he 
caused that her warnings respecting the downfall of Troy, and the ensuing 
sufferings of her race, should be disregarded by her counlTy men.— jinthon. 



NIGHT IX. 425 



THE LAST SCENE OP NATURE. 

Seest thou, Lorenzo ! what depends on man ? 

The fate of nature ; as for man her birth. 

Earth's actors change earth's transitory scenes, 

And make creation groan with human guilt. 155 

How must it groan in a new deluge whelm' d, 

But not of waters ! At the destined hour, 

By the loud trumpet summon'd to the charge, 

See, all the formidable sons of fire. 

Eruptions, earthquakes, comets, hghtnings, play 

Their various engines ; all at once disgorge 161 

Their blazing magazines ; and take, by storm. 

This poor terrestrial citadel of man. 

Amazing period ! when each mountain-height 

Out-burns Vesuvius ; rocks eternal pour 165 

Their melted mass, as rjvers once they pour'd ; 

Stars rush ; and final ruin fiercely drives 

Her ploughshare o'er creation ! — While aloft, 

More than astonishment ! if more can be ! 

Far other firmament than e'er was seen, 170 

Than e'er was thought by man ! Far other stars ! 

Stars animate, that govern these of fire ; 

Far other sun ! — A Sun, O how unhke 
^ . The Babe of Bethle'm ! How unlike the man 
\' That groan'd on Calvary ! — Yet He it is ; 1*75 

That man of sorrows ! how changed ! What pomp ! 

In grandeur terrible, all heav'n descends ! 

And gods, ambitious, triumph in his train. 



159. Sons of fire : A lively personification of things inanimate. The fol- 
lowing description awakens sublime and thrilling emotions. The figure of 
ruin fiercely driving her ploughshare ohr creation^ is exceedingly graphic. It 
seems to be an allusion to the Koman ploughshare that was urged through 
the ruins of the temple and city of Jerusalem by Titus. 

178. Gods : Angels. 



426 THE CONSOLATION. 

A swift archangel witli liis golden v/ing, 

As blots and clouds, that darken and disgrace 180 

The scene divine, sweep stars and suns aside. 

And now, all dross removed, heav'n's own pure day^ 

Full on the confines of our ether, flames : 

While (dreadful contrast !) far, how far beneath ! 

Hell bursting, belches forth her blazing seas, 185 

And storms sulphureous ; her voracious javv-s 

Expanding wide, and roaring for her vrej. 

Lorenzo ! welcome to this scene ; the last 
In nature's course ; the first in wisdom's thought. 
This strikes, if aught can strike thee; this awakes 190 

The most supine ; this snatches man from death. 
Rouse, rouse, Lorenzo, then, and follow me, 
Where truth, the most momentous man can hear, 
Loud calls my soul, and ardour wings her flight. 
I find my inspiration in my theme : 195 

The grandem* of my subject is my muse. 

At midnight (when m^ankind is wi-apt in peace, 
And worldly fancy feeds on golden dreams ;) 
To give more dread to man's most dreadful hour, 
At midnight, 'tis presumed this pomp will burst 200 

From tenfold darkness ; sudden as the spark 
From smitten steel ; from nitrous grain, the blaze. 
Man, starting from his couch, shall sleep no more ! 
The day is broke, wliich never more shall close ! 
Above, around, beneath, amazement all ! 205 

Terror and glory, join'd in their extremes ! 
Our GOD in grandeur, and our world on fire ! 
All nature struggling in the j^angs of death ! 
Dost thou not hear hei* ? Dost thou not deplore 

179-81. What a splendid imagination is here exhibited. 

184. The dreadful contrast thnt foilowp. is powerfully drawn. 

196. Is my muse: Is that which inspires and elevates my mind. The 
passage which here commences, gives evidence of the workings of a mind 
uncommonly elevated, and inspired by the subject it was contemplating and 
describing. Few passages awake as sublime emotions in the serious mind. 



NIGHT IX. 



427 



Her strong comT.ilsions, and her final gi-oan? 210 

Where are we now ? All me ! the ground is gone 

On which we stood : Lorenzo 1 While thou mayst, 

Provide more firm support, or sink for ever ! 

Where ? how ? from whence ? Vain hope ! It is too late ! 

Where, where, for shelter, shall the guilty fly, 215 

When consternation turns the good man pale ? 

Great day ! for which all other days were made ; 
For which earth rose from chaos, man from earth ; 
And an eternity, the date of gods, 
Descended on poor earth-created man ! 220 

Great day of dread, decision, and despair ' 

At thought of thee each sublunary wish 

Lets go its eager grasp, and drops the world ; 

And cafclies at each reed of hope in heav'n. 

At thought of thee ! — And art thou absent, then ? 225 

Lorenzo ! no ; 'tis here ; it is begun ; — 

Already is begun the grand assize. 

In thee, in all. Deputed conscience scales 

The dread tribunal, and forestalls our doom : 

Forestalls ; and by forestalHng proves it sure. 230 

Why on himself should man void judgment pass ? 

Is idle nature laughing at her sons ? 

Who conscience sent, her sentence will support ; 

And GOD above assert that God in man. 

Thrice happy they ! that enter now the court 235 

Heav'n opens in their bosoms. But, how rare, 
Ah me ! that magnanimity, how rare ! 
What hero, like the man who stands himself; 
Who dares to meet his naked heart alone ; 
Who hears, intrepid, the full charge it brings, 240 

Resolved to silence futm-e murmurs there ? 
The covv^ard flies ; and, flying, is undone. 
(Art thou a coward ? No.) The coward flies ; 

233. Who: He who. 

235. The court : The court of conscience. 



428 THE CONSOLATION. 

Thinks, but thinks slightly ; asks, but feat's to know ; 
Asks, ' What is truth V with Pilate ; and retires ; 245 

Dissolves the court and mingles with the throng : 
Asylum sad ! from reason, hope, and heav'n ! 

THE LAST DAY SHOULD BE PONDERED BY MAN. 

Shall all, but man, look out with ardent eye, 
For that great day, which was ordain'd for man ? 

day of consummation ! Mark supreme 250 
(K men are wise) of human thought ! nor least. 

Or in the sight of angels, or their Kin g ! 

Angels, whose radiant chcles, height o'er height, 

Order o'er order, rising, blaze o'er blaze. 

As in a theatre, surround this scene, 255 

Intent on man, and anxious for his fate. 

Angels look out for thee ; for thee, their Lord, 

To vindicate his glory ; and for thee, 

Creation universal calls aloud, 

To disinvolve the moral world, and give 260 

To nature's renovation brighter charms. 

Shall man alone, whose fate, whose final fate, 
Hangs on that hour, exclude it from his thought \ 

1 think of nothing else ; I see ! I feel it ! 

All nature, like an earthquake, trembling round ! 265 

All deities, like summer swarms, on wing ! 

All basking in the full meridian blaze ! 

I see the Judge enthroned ! the flaming guard ! 

The volume open'd ! open'd ev'ry heart : 

A sun-beam pointing out each secret thought ! 270 

No patron ! intercessor none ! now past 

The sweet, the clement, mediatorial hour ! 

For guilt, no plea ! to pain, no pause ! no bound ! 

Inexorable, all ! and all, extreme ! 

Nor man alone ; the foe of God and man, 275 

252. Or in the : Either in the, &c. 
266. Deities: Angels. 



NIOHT IX. 429 

From his dark den, blaspheming, drags his chain, 

And rears his brazen front, with thunder scarr'd ; 

Receives his sentence, and begins his hell. 

All vengeance past, now, seems abundant grace : 

Like meteors in a stormy sky, how roll 280 

His baleful eyes ! He curses whom he dreads ; 

And deems it the first moment of his fall. 

'Tis present to my thought ! — and yet, where is it ? 
Angels can't tell me ; angels cannot guess 
The pei'iod ; from created beings lock'd 285 

In darkness. But the process, and the place, 
Are less obscure ; for these may man inquire. 
Say, thou great close of human hopes and fears 1 
Great key of hearts ! Great finisher of fates I 
Great end! and great beginning ! Say, where art thou ? 290 
Ai't thou in time, or in eternity ? 
Nor in eternity, nor time, I find thee. 
These, as two monarchs, on their borders meet, 
(Monarchs of all elapsed, or unarrived !) 

As in debate, how best their pow'rs aUied 295 

May swell the grandeur, or discharge the wrath 
Of Him whom both their monarchies obey. 

THE REIGN OF TIME ENDED. 

Time, this vast fabric for him built (and doom'd 

277. With thunder scarred : Our author derived this idea from Milton : 

Darken'd so, yet shone 
Above them all th' Arch-angel : hut his face 
Deep scars of thunder had intrench''d, and care 
Sat on his faded cheek ; but under brows 
Of dauntless courage, and considerate pride 
"Waiting revenge ; cruel his eye, hut cast 
Signs of remorse and passion to behold 
The fellows of his crime, the followers rather 
(Far other once beheld in bliss), condemned 
For ever now to have their lot in pain. 

Paradise Lost, Booh 7., 599—608. 

278. Begins his hell: His previous sufferings being, for severity, not worth 
consideration, in comparison with those now and henceforth, in pursuance 
of the sentence of the last day, to be endured. 



430 THE CONSOLATION. 

With Mm to fall) now bursting o'er his head ; 

His lamp, the sun, extingnish'd ; from beneath 300 

The frown of hideous darkness, calls his sons 

From their long slumber ; from earth's heaving womb 

To second bhth ; contemporary throng ! l 

Roused at one call, upstarting from one bed, 

Prest in one crowd, appall'd with one amaze, 305 

He tm*ns them o'er, Eternity ! to thee. 

Then (as a king deposed disdains to hve) 

He falls on his own sithe ; nor falls alone ; 

His greatest foe falls with him : Time, and he 

Who murder'd all time's offspring, Death, expire. 310 

THE REIGN OF ETERNITY BEG-UN. THE FINAL SENTENCE. 

Time was ! Eternity now reigns alone : 
Awful eternity ! offended queen ! 
And her resentment to mankind, how just ! 
With kind intent, soliciting access, 

How often has she knock'd at human hearts ! ^15 

Rich to repay their hospitahty ; 
How often call'd ! and with the voice of God ! 
Yet bore repulse, excluded as a cheat ! 
A dream ! while foulest foes found welcome there ! 
A dream, a cheat, now, all things, but her smile. 320 

For, lo ! her twice ten thousand gates thrown wide, 
As thrice from Indus to the frozen pole. 
With banners, streaming as the comet's blaze, 
And clarions, louder than the deep in storms. 
Sonorous as immortal breath can blow, 325 

Pour forth their myriads, potentates, and pow'rs. 
Of light, of darkness ; in a middle field, 
Wide as creation ! populous, as wide ! 

321-35. A truly sublime and noble passage, affording us an altogether 
worthy view of one of the grandest scenes in the history of the universe, 
and one in which all mankind are deeply concerned, though generally, alas, 
toT unwilling to anticipate and prepare for it. 



NIGHT IX. 



431 



330 



A neutral region ! there to mark tli' event 

Of that gi-eat di-ama, whose preceding scenes 

Detain'd them close spectators, through a length 

Of ages, rip'ning to this grand result ; 

Ages, as yet unnumber'd, but by God ; 

Who, now, pronouncing sentence, vindicates 

The rights of virtue, and his own renown. 335 

THE GRAND AND AWFUL EVENTS WHICH FOLLOW THE LAST 

SENTENCE. 

Eternity, the various sentence past, 
Assio'iis the sever'd throno- distinct abodes. 
Sulphureous, or ambrosial. What ensues? 
The deed predominant ! the deed of deeds ! 
W^hich makes a hell of hell, a heav'n of heav'n. 340 

The goddess, with determined aspect, turns 
Her adamantine key's enormous size 

342. Her adamantine keyh, &c. : The passage connected with this line 
reminds us of some of the most impressive iines of the " Paradise f-ost." It 
bears, indeed, some little similarity to the quotation w^e are about to make. 
Our author makes eternity a goddess, who holds the keys of hell and of 
heaven, which she opens, and then shuts to be unlocked no more. This 
accomplished, the circumstance of hurling the keys into the deep, profound, 
and fathomless darkness there to rust, and to be used no more, ixnpresses 
most deeply the idea of the impossibility of future change in the condition 
of the wicked and the good. It may have been suggested to the author by 
that thrilling passage in the history of Queen Mary's escape from her prison 
in Lochleven castle, when her loyal Douglass, at the peril of his life, pos- 
sessed himself of the keys of the castle, and having unlocked the doors in 
the way of her escape, and having locked them again upon the pursuers, 
bore the keys to the lake, and when the boat had reached the deepest part, 
cast them into its depths, to be used no more against his beloved queeu. 
Milton makes sin the portress of hell, and thus wa'ites : 

The key of this infernal pit by due, 

And by command of Heavn's all-powerful King, 

I keep, by him forbidden to unlock 

Those adamantine gates, &c. 

Afterwards Satan persuades her to open them., and. 

From her side the fatal key, 
Sad instrument of all our woe, she took ; 



432 THE CONSOLATION. 

Through destiny's inextricable wards, 

Deep driving ev'ry bolt, on both their fates : 

Then, from the crystal battlements of heav'n, 345 

Down, down she hurls it thi-ough the dark profound, 

Ten thousand thousand fathom ; there to rust, 

And ne'er unlock her resolution more. 

The deep resounds ; and hell, through all her glooms, 

Returns, in gi'oans, the melancholy roar. 350 

how unlike the chorus of the skies ! 
how unlike those shouts of joy, that shake 
The whole ethereal ! how the concave rings ! 
Nor strange ! when deities their voice exalt ; 
And louder far, than when creation rose, 355 

To see creation's godlike aim, and end. 
So well accomphsh'd ! so divinely closed ! 
To see the mighty Dramatist's last act 
(As meet) in glory rising o'er the rest. 

No fancied god, a God indeed descends, 3G0 

To solve all knots ; to strike the moral home ; 
To throw full day on darkest scenes of time ; 
To clear, commend, exalt, and crown the whole. 



And towTds the gate rolling her bestial train, 
Forthwith the huge portcullis high up-drew, 
Which but herself, not all the Stygian pow'rs 
Could once have moved ; then in the key-hole turns 
The intricate wards, and ev'ry bolt and bar 
Of massy iron or solid rock ^^ith ease 
Unfastens. On a sudden open fly 
With impetuous recoil and jarring sound 
Th' infernal doors, and on their hinges grate 
Harsh thunder, that the lowest bottom shook 
Of Erebus. She open'd ; but to shut 
Excelled her power. 

Paradise. Lost, Book IL, 871—884 

358, Mighty Dramatist's last act : The Almighty is here designated. The 
title, when closely scanned, seems not dignified or exalted enough ; but in 
the connection it raises no ideas inconsistent with proper reverence, and 
may, therefore, pass without censure. 

361. To strike the moral home: To impress on the heart the moral lessons 
of Providence. 



i 



NIGHT IX. 433 

Hence in one peal of loud eternal praise, 

The charm'd spectators thunder their applause ; 365 

And the vast void beyond, applause resounds. 

PHYSICAL EVILS DESIGNED FOR OUR MORAL GOOD. 

What then am I ? 

Amidst applauding worlds, 
And worlds celestial, is there found on earth, 
A peevish, dissonant, rebellious string, 3Y0 

Which jars in the grand chorus, and complains ? 
Censure on thee, Lorenzo ! I suspend, 
And turn it on myself; how greatly due ! 
All, all is right, by God ordained or done ; 
And who, but God, resumed the friends he gave ? 375 

And have I been complaining, then, so long ? 
Complaining of his favours, pain, and death ? 
Who, without pain's advice, would e'er be good ? 
Who, without death, but would be good in vain ? 
Pain is to save from pain ; all punishment, 380 

To make for peace ; and death, to save from death ; 
And second death, to guard immortal hfe ; 
To rouse the careless, the presumptuous awe, 
And turn the. tide of souls another way : 
By the same tenderness divine ordain'd, 385 

That planted Eden, and high-bloom'd for man, 
A fairer Eden, endless in the skies. 

Heav'n gives us friends to bless the present scene ; 
Resumes them, to prepare us for the next. 
All evils natural are moral goods ; 390 

All discipline, indulgence, on the whole. 
None are unhappy : all have cause to smile. 
But such as to themselves that cause deny. 
Our faults are at the bottom of our pains ; 
Error, in act, or judgment, is the source 395 

Of endless sighs. We sin, or we mistake ; 
And nature tax, when false opinion stings, 
19 



134 THE CONSOLATION'. 

Let impious grief be bauisli'd, joy indulged ; 

But chiefly then, when grief puts in her claim. 

Joy from the joyous, frequently betrays ; 400 

Oft lives in vanity, and dies in wo. 

Joy amidst ills, corroborates, exalts ; 

'Tis joy, and conquest ; joy, and ^di-tue too. 

A noble fortitude in ills, delights 

Heav'n, earth, ourselves ; 'tis duty, glory, peace. 405 

Affliction is the good man^s shining scene : 

Prosperity conceals his brightest ray : 

As night to stars, wo lustre gives to man. 

Heroes in battle, pilots in the storm. 

And virtue in calamities, admire. 410 

The crown of manhood is a winter-joy ; 

An evergreen, that stands the northern blast, 

And blossoms in the rigour of our fate. 

'Tis a prime part of happiness to know 
How much unhappiness must prove our lot; 415 

A part which few possess ! I'll pay life's tax, 
Without one rebel murmur, from this horn-, 
Nor think it misery to be a man : 
Who thinks it is, shall never be a god. 
Some ills we "wish for, when we ^vish to live. 420 

EXISTENCE AN INESTIMABLE BLESSING. 

What spoke proud passion ? — ' Wish my being lost ?' 
Presumptuous ! blasphemous ! absurd ! and false ! 
The triumph of my soul is, — That I am ; 
And therefore that I may be — AAliat ? Lorenzo ? 
Look inward, and look deep ; and deeper still : 425 

Unfathomably deep our treasure runs 
In golden veins, through all eternity ! 
Ages, and ages, and succeeding still 

415. Must prove (to be) ou?- lot. 

421. Wish, &c. : Referring to Night I. 



NIGHT IX, 435 

New ages, -where this phantom of an horn-, 

Which courts, each night, dull slumber, for repair, 430 

Shall wake, and wonder, and exult, and praise, 

And fly through infinite, and all unlock ; 

And (if deserved) by Heav'n's redimdant love, 

Made half adorable itself, adore ; 

And find, in adoration, endless joy ! 435 

Where thou, not master of a moment here, 

Frail as the flow'r, and fleeting as the gale, 

Mayst boast a whole eternity, enrich'd 

With all a kind Omnipotence can pom'. 

Since Adam fell, no mortal, uninspired, 440 

Has ever yet conceived, or ever shall. 

How kind is God, how great (if good) is man. 

'No man too largely from Heav'n's love can hope, 

If what is hoped he laboui-s to secure. 

THE SEVERITIES OF GOd's GOVERXMEXT VINDICATED. 

Ills ? — there are none : All-gracious : none from Thee ; 445 
From man full many ! ISTum'rous is the race 
Of blackest ills, and those immortal too. 
Begot by madness on fair hberty ; 
Heav'n's daughter, hell-debauch'd ! her hand alone 
Unlocks destruction to the sons of men, 450 

Fu-st barr'd by Time ; high wall'd with adamant, 
Guarded with terrors reaching to this world, 
And cover'd with the thimders of Thy law ; 
Whose threats are mercies ; whose iDJunctions, guides, 
Assisting, not restraining, reason's choice; 455 

Whose sanctions, unavoidable results 
From nature's course, indulgently reveal'd ; 

429. This phantom of an hour : The soul in its present fugitive or transient 
abode, 

448. Fair liberty : The faculty by which we choose good or evil is here 
personified. This was hell-debancW d^ corrupted by Satan in Paradise, and 
ever since unduly influenced by him to the choice of evil. 



486 THE CONSOLATION. 

If unreveal'd, more daiig'rous, nor less sure. 

Thus, an indulgent father warns his sons, 

*Do this ; fly that' — nor always tells the cause ; 460 

Pleased to reward, as duty to his will, 

A conduct needful to their own repose. 

Great God of wonders ! (if, thy love survey'd, 
Aught else the name of wonderful retains) 
What rocks are these, on which to build our trust ! 465 

Thy ways admit no blemish ; none I find ; 
Or this alone — ' That none is to be found.' 
Not one, to soften censm"e's hardy crime ; 
Not one, to palhate peevish grief's complaint, 
Who, like a demon murm'ring, from the dust, 4*70 

Dares into judgment call her Judge. — Supreme ! 
For all I bless thee ; most, for the severe : 

Her death — my own at hand — the fiery gulf, 
That flaming bound of wrath omnipotent ! 
It thunders ; but it thunders to preserve ; 475 

It strengthens what it strikes ; its wholesome dread 
Averts the dreaded pain ; its hideous groans 
Join heav'n's sweet hallelujahs in thy praise, 
Great Source of good alone ! How kind in all ! 
In vengeance kind ! pain, death, Gehenna save. 480 

Thus, in thy woi'ld material, mighty Mind ! 
Not that alone which solaces, and shines. 
The rough and gloomy, challenges our praise. 
The winter is as needful as the spring ; 

The thunder as the sun ; a stagnate mass 485 

Of vapours breeds a pestilential air : 
Nor more propitious the Favonian breeze 
To nature's health, than purifying storms. 

468. To soften, &c. : To soften the hardy crime of censuring the ways of 
God. 

473. Her death : Lucia's. 

487. Favonian: The gentle western breeze, which prevailed at the com- 
mencement of spring, and promoted vegetation. Zephyr is another name 
for it. 



NIGHT IX. 437 

The di'ead volcano miiiistei*s to good : 

Its smotlier'd flames might undermine the world. 490 

Loud -^tnas fulminate in love to man ; 

Comets good omens are, v^hen duly scann'd ; 

And, in their use, eclipses learn to shine. 
Man is responsible for ills received ; 

Those we call wi-etched are a chosen band, 495 

Compell'd to refuge in the right, for peace. 

Amid my hst of blessings infinite. 

Stand this the foremost, ' That my heart has bled.' 

'Tis Heav'n's last effort of good will to man : 

When pain can't bless, Heav'n quits us in despair. 500 

"Who fails to grieve, when just occasion calls. 

Or grieves too much, deserves not to be blest ; 

Inhuman, or effeminate, his heart : 

Reason absolves the grief, which reason ends. 
/May Heav'n ne'er trust my friend with happiness, 505 

I Till it has taught him how to bear it well, 

jBy previous pain ; and made it safe to smile ! 

Such smiles are mine, and such may they remain ; 

IS^or hazard their extinction, from excess. 

My change of heart a change of style demands ; 510 

The Consolation cancels the Complaint, 

And makes a convert of my guilty song. 

REVIEW OF THE POEM. 

As when o'erlabour'd, and inchned to breathe, 
A panting traveller, some rising gi-ound. 

Some small ascent, has gain'd, he turns him round, 515 

And measures with his eye the various vales, 

504. Reason absolves^ &c. : Reason approves the grief which ends when 
reason dictates, and is not carried to excess. 

511. Consolation: The title of the present part; Complaint^ that of all 
the preceding parts of the poem. The idea conveyed is, that the evils com- 
plained of in the preceding parts, should not be regarded as such, and that 
the title of these parts should be changed to Consolation. 



438 THE CONSOLATION. 

The fields, woods, meads, and rivers, he has pass'd ; 

And, satiate of his journey, thinks of home, 

Endear'd by distance, nor affects more toil ; 

Thus I, though small, indeed, is that ascent 520 

The muse has gain d, review the paths she trod ; 

Various, extensive, beaten but by few ; 

And, conscious of her prudence in repose, 

Pause ; and with pleasure meditate an end, 

Though still remote ; so fruitful is my theme. 525 

Through many a field of moral and divine. 

The muse has stray'd ; and miuch of sori'ow seen 

In human ways ; and much of false and vain ; 

Which none, who travel this bad road, can miss. 

O'er friends deceased full heartily she wept ; 530 

Of love divine the wonders she display'd ; 

Proved man immortal ; show'd the source of joy ; 

The grand tribunal raised ; assign'd the bounds 

Of human grief: in few, to close the whole, 

The moral muse has shadow'd out a sketch, 535 

Though not in form, nor with a Raphael-stroke, 

Of most our weakness needs believe or do, 

In this our land of travel, and of hope. 

For peace on earth, or prospect of the skies. 

What then remains ? — Much ! much ! a mighty debt 540 
To be discharged ; these thoughts ! O Night ! are thine ; 
From thee they came, hke lovei-s' secret sighs, 
While others slept. So Cynthia, (poets feign,) 
In shadows veil'd, soft sliding from her sphere. 
Her shepherd cheer'd ; of her enamour'd less, 545 

Than I of thee. — And art thou still unsung, 

534. In few words. 

536. Raphael- stroke : Such a stroke of the pencil or brush as Raphael, the 
great Italian painter, might have executed. 

543. Cynthia: A name for Diana, who had three different offices. In the 
heavens she is called Luna (the moon) ; on the earth, Diana ; and in hell, 
Proserpine, or Hecate. In the first of these offices our author alludes to her 
in the text. Compare notes on Night III., near the beginning. 



NIGHT IX. 



439 



Beneath whose brow, and by vrhose aid, I sing ? 

Immoral silence ! — "Where shall I begin ? 

Where end ? Or how steal music from the spheres, 

To soothe then- goddess ? 550 

AN ADDRESS TO NIGHT. 

O majestic ISTight! 
Nature's great ancestor ! Day's elder born ! 
And fated to survive the transient sun ! 
By mortals and immortals seen with awe ! 
A starry crown thy raven brow adorns, 555 

An azure zone, thy waist ; clouds, in heav'n's loom 
Wrought through varieties of shape and shade. 
In ample folds of drapery divine, 
Thy flowing mantle form ; and, heav'n throughout, 
Voluminously pour thy pompous train. 560 

Thy gloomy grandeurs (nature's most august, 
Inspiring aspect !) claim a gi'ateful verse ; 
And, hke a sable curtain starr'd with gold, 
Drawn o'er my labom's past, shall close the scene. 

THE STUDY OF CREATION niPORTANT. 

And what, man ! so worthy to be sung ? 565 

What more prepares us for the songs of heav'n ? 
Creation, of archangels is the theme ! 
What, to be sung, so needful? What so well 
Celestial joys prepares us to sustain ? 

The soul of man, His face design'd to see 570 

Who gave these wonders to be seen by man. 
Has here a previous scene of objects great. 
On which to dwell ; to stretch to that expanse 

549. Music from the spheres: An allusion to the ancient notioD of the 
heavenly bodies in their harmonious and beautiful revolutions yielding 
delightful music, appreciable only by the gods. 

552. Dayh elder born : Night preceded day — was more ancient- See 
Gen. i. 3 — 5. The paragraph exhibits a brilliant personification of night. 



440 THE CONSOLATION. 

Of thouglit, to rise to that exalted height 

Of admii-ation, to contract that awe, 675 

And give her whole capacities that strenglh, 

"Which best may qualify for final joy. 

The more om* spirits are enlarged on earth, 

The deeper draught shall they receive of heav'n. 

Heav'n's King! whose face unveil'd consummates bliss ; 680 
Redundant bliss ! which fills that mighty void, 
The whole creation leaves in human hearts ! 
Thou who didst touch the hp of Jesse's son. 
Rapt in sweet contemplation of these fires. 
And set his harp in concert with the spheres ! 685 

"While of thy works material the supreme 
I dare attempt, assist my daring song : 
Loose me from earth's enclosure, from the sun's. 
Contracted cii'cle set my heart at large ; 

Ehminate my spirit, give it range 690 

Through provinces of thought yet miexplored ; 
Teach me, by this stupendous scaflblding, 
Creation's golden steps, to climb to Thee. 
Teach me with art great nature to control. 
And spread a lustre o'er the shades of night. 595 

Feel I thy kind assent ? and shall the sun 
Be seen at midnight, rising in my song ? 

THE VASTNESS OF CREATION. 

Lorenzo ! come, and warm thee : thou whose heart. 
Whose little heart is moor'd within a nook 
Of this obscure terrestrial, anchor weigh. 600 

575. Ccmtract : Acquire. 

511S. The sentiment here advanced furnishes a grand and powerful 
motive to self-improvement and cultivation while on earth, 

582. Leaves in human hearts : Leaves unfilled, &c. Not even the vast 
creation is capable of satisfying the enlarged desires of the human heart 
Heaven's king alone can satisfy them, and leave no void. 
- -583. Jesse's son: David. Compare 1 Sam. xvi. 18, 24. 



NIGHT IX. 441 

Another ocean calls, a nobler port ; 

I am thy pilot, I thy prosp'rous gale. 

Gainful thy voyage through yon azure main ; 

Main, without tempest, pirate, rock, or shore ; 

And whence thou mayst import eternal wealth ; 605 

And leave to beggar'd minds the pearl and gold. 

Thy travels dost thou boast o'er foreign realms ? 

Thou stranger to the world ! thy tour begin ; 

Thy tour through nature's universal orb. 

Nature dehneates her v/hole chart at large, 610 

On soaring souls, that sail among the spheres ; 

And man, how purblind, if unknown the whole ! 

Who circles spacious earth, then travels here, 

Shall own he never was from home before ! 

Come, my Prometheus, from thy pointed rock 615 

Of false ambition, if unchain'd, we'll mount ; 

We'll innocently steal celestial fire, 

And kindle our devotion at the stars ; 

A theft, that shall not chain, but set thee free. 

Above our atmosphere's intestine wars, 620 

Rain's fountain-head, the magazine of hail ; 
Above the northern nest of feather'd snows. 
The brew of thunders, and the flaming forge 
That forms the crooked lightning ; 'bove the caves 
Where infant tempests wait their growing wings, 625 

And tune their tender voices to that roar. 
Which soon, perhaps, shall shake a guilty world ; 
Above misconstrued omens of th^ sky, 
Far-travell'd comets' calculated blaze ; 

Elance thy thought, and think of more than man. 630 

Thy soul, till now, contracted, wither'd, shrunk, 
Blighted by blasts of earth's unwholesome air, 
Will blossom here ; spread all her faculties 

615. My Prometheus : See notes on Night VIIT., 420. 
623. The brew of thunders: The region where thunders are prepared. 
630. Elance thy thought : Dart, or hurl, thy thought. 
19* 



442 ~ THE CONSOLATION. 

To these bright ardours ; ev'ry pow'r unfold, 
And rise into sublimities of thought. 635 

Stars teach, as well as shine. At nature's birth, 
Thus their commission ran — ' Be kind to man.' 
Where art thou, poor benighted traveller ! 
i/The stars will hght thee, tho' the moon should fail. 
"Where art thou, more benighted ! more astray ! 640 

In ways immoral ? The stars call thee back ; 
And, if obey'd their counsel, set thee right. 

LESSONS OF THE STARS. 

This prospect vast, what is it ? — Weigh'd aright, 
'Tis nature's system of divinity. 

And ev'ry student of the night inspires. 645 

'Tis elder Scripture, writ by God's own hand : 
Scripture authentic ! uncorrupt by man. 
Lorenzo ! with my radius (the rich gift 
Of thought nocturnal !) I'll point out to thee 
Its various lessons ; some that may surprise 650 

An un-adept in mysteries of night ; 
Little, perhaps, expected in her school. 
Nor thought to grow on planet, or on star. 
Bulls, lions, scorpions, monsters, here we feign ; 
Ourselves more monstrous, not to see what here 655 

Exists indeed ; — a lecture to mankind. 

What read we here ? — Th' existence of a God ? 
Yes ; and of other beings, man above ; 
Natives of ether ! sons of higher climes ! 
And, what may move Lorenzo's wonder more, 660 

Eternity is written in the skies. 
And whose eternity ? Lorenzo, thine ; 
Mankind's eternity. Nor faith alone ; 

634. Ardours : Luminaries. 
648- Radius : Wand, or rod. 

654. We feign : The author refers to the constellations marked out under 
these various figures, on the artificial globe. 



NIGHT IX. 44£ 

Virtue gi'ows here : here springs the sov'reign cure 

Of almost ev'ry vice ; but chiefly thine ; 665 

Wrath, pride, ambition, and impure desire. 

Lorenzo ! thou canst wake at midnight too, 
Though not on morals bent : ambition, pleasure ! 
Those tyrants I for thee so lately fought, 
Afford their harass'd slaves but slender rest. " 670 

Thou, to whom midnight is immoral noon, 
And the sun's noon-tide blaze, prime dawn of day ; 
Not by thy climate, but capricious crime, 
Commencing one of our antipodes ! 

In thy nocturnal rove, one moment halt, 675 

'Twixt stage and stage, of riot and cabal ; 
And Hft thine eye (if bold an eye to lift, 
If bold to meet the face of injured Heav'n) 
To yonder stars : for other ends they shine, 
Than to hght travellers from shame to shame, 680 

And thus, be made accomphces in guilt. 

"Why from yon arch, that infinite of space, 
With infinite of lucid orbs replete, 
Which set the hving firmament on fire, 

At the first glance, in such an overwhelm 685 

Of wonderful, on man's astonish'd sight, 
Eushes Omnipotence ? — To curb our pride ^.^ 
Our reason rouse, and lead it to that Pow'r, 
Whose love lets down these silver chains of hght. 
To draw up man's ambition to Himself, 690 

And bind our chaste affections to his throne. 
Thus the three virtues, least alive on earth, 
And welcomed on heav'n's coast with most applause 
An humble, pure, and heav'n'ly-minded heart, 
Are here inspired. — And canst thou gaze too long? 695 

669. So lately fought : In Night VIII. 

671-4. Lorenzo passed his nights in dissipation, and his days in bed, thus 
conforming his periods of action and repose not to the habits of his neigh- 
bours, but of his antipodes, or people living on the opposite side of the 
globe. 



444 THE CONSOLATION. 

Nor stands thy wrath deprived of its reproof, 
Or iinupbraided by this radiant chou\ 
The planets of each system represent 
Kind neighbours : mutual amity prevails ; 
Sweet interchange of rays, received, retm*n'd ; 700 

Enhght'ning, and enhghten'd ! All, at once, 
Attracting, and attracted ! Patriot-hke, 
None sins against the welfare of the whole ; 
But their reciprocal, unselfish aid. 

Affords an emblem of millennial love. 705 

Nothing in nature, much less conscious being, 
"Was e'er created solely for itself : 
Thus man ms sov'reign duty learns in this 
Material picture of benevolence. 

And know, of all our supercilious race, 710 

Thou most inflammable ! thou wasp of men ! 
Man's angiy heai't, inspected, would be found 
As rightly set, tis are the starry spheres ; 
'Tis natm-e's structm-e, broke by stubborn will. 
Breeds all that uncelestial discord there. 715 

Wilt thou not feel the bias nature gave ? 
Canst thou descend from converse with the skies. 
And seize thy brother's throat ? — For what ? — a clod ? 
An inch of earth ? The planets cry, " Forbear :" 
They chase our double darkness, nature's gloom ; 720 

And (kinder still !) om* intellectual night. 

And see. Day's amiable sister sends 
Her invitation, in the softest rays 
Of mitigated lustre ; courts thy sight, 

"Which suffei-s from her tyrant-brother's blaze. 725 

Night grants thee the full freedom of the skies, 

698-705. A most beautiful, ingenious, and useful thought is conveyed lu 
these lines. 

722. Sister : The nioon. 

725. Tyrant-brother : The sun. Consult the notes at the commencement 
of Night III. 



NIGHT IX. 445 

Nor rudely reprimands thy lifted eye ; 

With gain, and joy, she bribes thee to be wise. 

Night opes the noblest scenes, and sheds an awe, 

Which gives those venerable scenes full weight, IdO 

And deep reception, in th' entender'd heart : 

While light peeps through the darkness, like a spy ; 

And darkness shows its grandeur by the light. 

Nor is the profit greater than the joy. 

If human hearts at glorious objects glow, 735 

And, admiration can inspire dehght. 

FEELINGS ARISING UPON A VIEW OF THE NOCTURNAL HEAVENS. 

What speak I more, than I, this moment feel ? 
With pleasing stupor fii-st the soul is struck, 
(Stupor ordain'd to make her truly wise !) 
Then into transport starting from her trance, "740 

With love, and admiration, how she glows ! 
This gorgeous apparatus ! this display ! 
This ostentation of creative pow'r ! 
This theatre ! — what eye can take it in ? 
By what divine enchantment was it rais'd, 745 

For minds of the first magnitude to launch 
In endless speculation, and adore ? 
One sun by day, by night ten thousand shine. 
And hght us deep into the Deity : 

How boundless in magnificence and might ! 750 

O what a confluence of ethereal fires, 
From urns unnumber'd, down the steep of heav'n. 
Streams to a point, and centres in my sight ! 
Nor tarries there ; I feel it at my heart. 

My heart, at once, it humbles and exalts ; 755 

Lays it in dust, and calls it to the skies. 
Who sees it unexalted, or unawed ? 
Who sees it, and can stop at what is seen ? 
Material ofispring of Omnipotence ! 
Inanimate, all-animating birth ! 760 



446 THE CONSOLATION. 

Work wortlay Him who made it ! worthy praise ! 

All praise ! praise more than human ! nor denied 

Thy praise divine ! — But tho' man, drown'd in sleep, 

Withholds his homage, not alone I wake : 

Bright legions swarm unseen, and sing, unheard 765 

By mortal ear, the glorious Architect, 

In this his universal temple, hung 

With lustres, with innumerable lights, 

That shed rehgion on the soul ; at once 

The temple and the preacher ! how loud ^ 110 

It calls devotion ! genuine gi-owth of night ! 

DEVOTION, THE DAUGHTER OP ASTRONOMY. 

Devotion ! daughter of astronomy ! 
An undevout astronomer is mad. 
True ; all things speak a God : but in the small, 
Men trace out Him ; in gi'eat, He seizes man; 11 5 

Seizes, and elevates, and wraps, and fills 
With new inquiries, 'mid associates new. 
Tell me, ye stars ! ye planets ! tell me, all 
Ye staiT'd, and planeted, inhabitants ? What is it ? 
What are these sons of wonder ? Say, proud arch ! 780 

(Within whose azure palaces they dwell) 
Built with di\ine ambition ! in disdain 
Of hmit built ! built in the taste of heav'n ! 
Vast concave ! ample dome ! wast thou design'd 
A meet apartment for the Deity ? — 1S5 

Not so ; that thought alone thy state impairs, 
Thy lofty sinks, and shallows thy profound, 
And straitens thy diffusive ; dwarfs the whole, 
And makes an universe an orrery. 

787. Shalloivs : Renders shallow. 

788. Straitens : Slakes narrow. 

789. Orrery : A mechanical contrivance for representing, on a small scale, 
the relative magnitudes, distances, and velocities of the solar system. It 



NIGHT IX, 447 

But when I drop mine eye, and look on man, 790 

Thy right regain'd, thy grandeur is restored, 
O nature ! wide flies oft" th' expanding round. 
As when whole magazines, at once, are fired, 
The smitten air is hollow'd by the blow ; 
The vast displosion dissipates the clouds ; 795 

Shock'd ether's billows dash the distant skies ; 
Thus, (but far more) th' expanding romid flies off. 
And leaves a mighty void, a spacious womb, 
Might teem with new creation ; re-inflamed, 
Thy luminaries triumph, and assume 800 

Divinity themselves. JSTor was it strange, 
Matter high-wrought to such surprising pomp, 
Such godlike glory, stole the style of gods. 
From ages dark, obtuse, and steep'd in sense ; 
For, sure, to sense, they truly are divine, 805 

And half absolved idolatry fi-om guilt ; 
IsTay, turned it into virtue. Such it was 
In those, who put forth all they had of man 
Unlost, to lift their thought, nor mounted higher ; 
But, weak of wing, on planets perch'd ; and thought 810 

What was then- highest, must be their adored. 

THE EXISTENCE AND GRANDEUR OF THE DEITY. 

But they how weak, who could no higher mount ! 
And are there then, Lorenzo, those, to whom 
Unseen and unexistent are the same ? 

And if incomprehensible is join'd, 815 

Who dare pronounce it madness to believe ? 

received this name from the Earl of Orrery, who was the first individual 
for whom one was manufactured. 

803. The style : The rank. 

807. Turned it into virtue : This is an unscriptural statement, as will be 
seen by referring to the first chapter of the Epistle to the Romans ; yet the 
author gives a plausible reason for it. 

810-11. ^7id thought that what was their highest object of contemplation 
must be their adored object^ or the object of their adoration. 



448 THE CONSOLATION". 

Why has the mighty Builder thrown aside 

All measure in his work ; stretch'd out his line 

So far, and spread amazement o'er the whole ? 

Then (as he took dehght in wide extremes,) 820 

Deep in the bosom of his universe, 

Dropt down that reas'ning mite, that insect, man, 

To crawl, and gaze, and wonder at the scene ? — 

That man might ne'er presume to plead amazement 

For disbelief of wonders in Himself. 825 

Shall God be less miraculous than what 

His hand has form'd ? Shall mysteries descend 

From unmysterious ? things more elevate, 

Be more famihar ? uncreated He 

More obvious than created, to the grasp 830 

Of human thought ? The more of wonderful 

Is heard in Him, the more we should assent. 

Could we conceive him, God he could not be ; 

Or he not God, or we could not be men. 

A God alone can comprehend a God : 835 

Man's distance how immense ! On such a theme, 

Know this, Lorenzo ! (seem it ne'er so strange,) 

Nothing can satisfy, but what confounds ; 

Nothing, but what astonishes, is true. 

The scene thou seest, attests the truth I sing : 840 

And ev'ry star sheds light upon thy creed. 

These stars, this furniture, this cost of heav'n, 

If but reported, thou hadst ne'er beheved ; 

But thine eye tells thee, the romance is true. 

The grand of nature is th' Almighty's oath, 845 

In reason's court, to silence unbelief. 

How my mind, op'ning at this scene, imbibes 
The moral emanations of the skies. 
While nought, perhaps, Lorenzo less admires ! 
Has the Great Sov'reign sent ten thousand worlds 850 

To tell us, he resides above them all, 

834. Or he: Either he. 



NIGHT IX. 449 

In glory's unapproachable recess ? 

And dare earth's bold inhabitants deny 

The sumptuous, the magnific embassy 

A moment's audience ? Turn we, nor will hear 855 

From whom they come, or what they would impart 

For man's emolument ; sole cause that stoops 

Their grandeur to man's eye ? Lorenzo ! rouse ; 

Let thought, awaken'd, take the hghtning's Aving, 

And glance from east to west, from pole to pole. 860 

"Who sees, but is confounded, or convinced ? 

Eenounces reason, or a God adores ? 

Mankind was sent into the world to see : 

Sight gives the science needful to their peace ; 

That obv'ious science asks small learning's aid. 865 

Wouldst thou on metaphysic pinions soar ? 

Or wound thy patience amid logic thorns ? 

Or travel history's enormous round ? 

Nature no such hard task enjoins : she gave 

A make to man directive of his thought ; 870 

A make set upright, pointing to the stars. 

As who should say, ' Read thy chief lesson there.' 

Too late to read this manuscript of heav'n, 

When, hke a parchment scroll, shrunk up by flames, 

It folds Lorenzo's lesson from his sight. 875 

THE STARS TELL OF ANGELIC BEINGS. 

Lessons how various ! ISTot the God alone ; 
I see his ministers ; I see, diffused 
In radiant orders, essences sublime, 
Of various offices, of various plume, 

In heav'nly hveries. distinctly clad, 880 

Azure, green, purple, pearl, or downy gold, 

870-1. A make to vian, &c. : Ovid has beautifully expressed the same 
thought : 

Pronaque cum spectent aniraalia cjetera terrain ; 

03 homini sutlime dedit : coelurcque tueri 

Jussit, et erectos ad sidcra tollere \ultus.~Met. I., 84, 8{J. 



450 THE C0NS0LATI0T7. 

Or all commix'd ; they stand, with wings outspread, 

List'ning to catch the Master's least command, 

And fly through nature, ere the moment ends ; 

Numbers innumerable ! — "Well conceived 885 

By Pagan, and by Christian ! o'er each sphere 

Presides an angel, to direct its course, 

And feed, or fan, its flames ; or to discharge 

Other high trusts unknown. For who can see 

Such pomp of matter, and imagine, mind, 890 

For which alone inanimate was made. 

More sj^aringly dispensed ? That nobler son, 

Far liker the great Sire ! 'Tis thus the skies 

Inform us of superiors numberless, 

As much, in excellence, above mankind, 895 

As above earth, in magnitude, the spheres. 

These, as a cloud of witnesses, hang o'er us ; 

In a throng'd theatre are all our deeds : 

Perhaps a thousand demigods descend 

On ev'ry beam we see, to walk with men. 900 

Awfiil reflection ! strong restraint from ill ! 

NATURE CONTRASTED WITH ART. 

Yet, here, our virtue finds still stronger aid 
From these ethereal glories sense surveys. 
Something: like mao-ic strikes from this blue vault. 
With just attention is it view'd ? We feel 905 

A sudden succour, unimplored, unthought ; 
Nature herself does half the work of man. 
Seas, rivei-s, mountains, forests, deserts, rocks, 

892. That nobler son: Mind, nobler than matter. Far liker the Great 
Sire : Far more like God than matter is, in respect to its wide dispersion, or 
extensive diffusion. 

899-901. A singular fancy is here introduced, but if consideied true it 
would be adapted, as the author intimates, powerfully to restrain from 
evil. 



NIGHT IX. 451 

The promontory's height, the depth profound 

Of subterranean, excavated grots, 910 

Black-brow' d, and vaulted high, and yawning wide 

From nature's structure, or the scoop of time ; 

If ample of dimension, vast of size, 

E'en these an aggrandizing impulse give ; 

Of solemn thought enthusiastic heights 915 

E'en these infuse. — But what of vast in these ? 

Nothing ; — or we must own the skies forgot. 

Much less in art. — Vain Art ! thou pigmy pow'r ! 

How dost thou swell and strut, with human pride, 

To show thy httleness 1 What childish toys, 920 

Thy wat'ry columns squirted to the clouds ! 

Thy basin'd rivers, and imprison'd seas ! 

Thy mountains moulded into forms of men ! 

Thy hundred-gated capitals ! or those 

Where three days' travel left us much to ride ; 925 

Gazing on miracles by mortals wrought, 

923. Moulded into forms of men : Such as Colossus at Rhodes, It was of 
hollow brass, however, and its larger cavities filled with stone. It was one 
hundred and five feet high, and its fingers were larger than entire statues 
comnQonly are. Our author refers, however, to marble statues of distin- 
guished men. 

924. Hundred- gated capitals : Such as Thebes, in Egypt, according to the 
description of it given by Homer, which is probably much exaggerated ; or 
he speaks in round numbers, and intends merely to convey the idea that it 
was an uncommonly large city, and possessed of many gates. Its architec- 
tural remains, both as to number and magnitude, furnish evidence, however, 
of an almost inconceivable magnificence and grandeur at some former 
periods. 

The city of Babylon was laid out in the form of a square, having twenty- 
five gates on each side, made of solid brass, which would make this a hun- 
dred-gated capital. From all these gates proceeded streets fifteen miles in 
length, and crossing each other at right angles. 

925. The walls of Babylon are computed at sixty miles in circumference, 
which covered an area of about eight times that of London ; yet, perhaps 
two thirds of this immense space was occupied with gardens, reservoirs of 
water, and large vacant places between them, as is usual in oriental cities. 



452 THE CONSOLATION. 

Ai-clies tiiumplial, theatres immense, 
Or nodding gardens pendent in mid-aii* 



927. In a former note triumphal arches are described (Night VI., 782) . 
As an example of theatres immense^ may be adduced the Colisaeum at Rome, 
begun by Vespasian, and completed by his son Titus. It covers five acres 
and a quarter of ground ; its walls are one hundred and sixty-six feet high ; 
its seats would accommodate eighty thousand spectators, and twenty thou- 
sand more had room to stand. It enclosed a vast arena, where thousands 
of gladiators and wild beasts contended at once, 

Butcher'd to make a Eoman holiday. 
This magnificent ruin has suffered much from earthquakes, and the de- 
stroying- influence of time ; and to the disgrace of the Papal government 
(says Brande), it was allowed to be used, in comparatively recent times, as 
a convenient quarry, whence the materials of many modern edifices have 
been derived. Byron has immortalized these ruins in his Childe Harold : 

But here, where murder breath'd her bloody steam : 

And here, where buzzing nations chok'd the ways, 

And roar'd or murmur'd like a mountain stream 

Dashing or winding as its torrent strays ; 

Here, where the Eoman miUions' blame or praise 

Was death or life, the playthings of a crowd, 

My voice sounds much, and fall the stars faint rays 

On the arena void ; seats crushed, walls bow'd ; 

And galleries, where my steps seem echoes strangely loud. 

A ruin, yet what a ruin ! from its mass 
Walls, palaces, half-cities, have been rear'd ; 
Yet oft the enormous skeleton ye pass 
And marvel where the spoil could have appear'd. 

928. Nodding gardens^ &c. : The most celebrated are those of ancient 
Babylon. The new palace built by Nebuchadnezzar was splendidly deco- 
rated with statues of men and animals, with vessels of gold and silver, and 
furnished with luxuries of all kinds brought thither from conquests in 
Egypt, Palestine, and Tyre. Its greatest boast were the hanging gardens, 
which acquired, even from Grecian writers, the appellation of one of the 
wonders of the world. They are attributed to the gallantry of Nebuchad- 
nezzar, who constructed them in compliance with a wish of his queen 
Amytis to possess elevated groves, such as she had enjoyed on the hills 
around her native Ecbatana. Babylon was all flat, and to accomplish so 
extravagant a desire, an artificial mountain was reared, four hundred feet on 
each side, while terraces, resting on ranges of piers one above another, rose 
to a height that overtopped the walls of the city — that is, above three hun- 
dred feet in elevation. The ascent from terrace to terrace was made by 
corresponding flights of steps. To admit thp roots of large trees, prodigious 
hollow piers were built, and filled with mould. From the Euphrates, which 



NIGHT IX. 453 

Or temples proud to meet their gods half-way ! 

Yet these affect us id no common kind, 930 

What then the force of such superior scenes ? 

Enter a temple ; it will strike an awe : 

What awe from this the Deity has built ! 

A good man seen, though silent, counsel gives ; 

The touch'd spectator wishes to be wise : 935 

In a bright mirror his own hands have made, 

Here we see something like the face of God. 

Seems it not then enough, to say, Lorenzo, 

To man abandon'd, ' Hast thou seen the skies V 

THE ABUSE OE THE STARRY SKY. 

And yet, so thwarted nature's kind design 940 

By daring man, he makes her sacred awe 
(That guard from ill) his shelter, his temptation 
To more than common guilt, and quite inverts 
Celestial art's intent. The trembhng stars 
See crimes gigantic, stalking through the gloom, 945 

With front erect, that hide their head by day. 
And making night still darker by their deeds. 

flowed close to the foundation, water was raised by machinery. To those 
who looked upon these terraces from a distance, they had the appearance of 
woods overhanging mountains. Such was the completion of Nebuchad- 
nezzar's work, when he found himself at rest in his house, and when he 
said : " Is not this great Babylon that I have built for the honour of the 
kingdom, by the might of my power, and the honour of my majesty" 
(Dan. iv) . No w^here could the king have taken so comprehensive a view 
of the city he had so magnificently constructed and adorned, as when walk- 
ing on the highest terrace of the gardens of his palace. — Kittoh Cyc. 

929. Or temples, &c. : As an illustration of this line, we may refer to the 
Pantheon at Rome, built about the commencement of the Christian era. It 
was the largest structure of ancient times, being of a round form, one hun- 
dred and eighty-eight feet in diameter, and one hundred and forty-eight feet 
high. It contained colossal statues of several of the Pagan gods. 

St. Peter's church, at Rome, has an altitude of four hundred and thirty- 
six feet, and St. Paul's of London, an altitude of three hundred and forty- 
four feet. 



454 THE CONSOLATION. 

SlumVring in covert, till the shades descend, 

Rapine and murder, link'd, now prowl for prey. 

The miser earths his treasm-es ; and the thief, 950 

Watching the mole, half beggars him ere morn. 

Now plots, and foul conspiracies, awake ; 

And, muffling up their horrors from the moon, 

Havock and devastation they prepare, 

And kingdoms tott'ring in the field of blood. 955 

J^ow sons of riot in mid revel rage. 

What shall I do ? suppress it ? or proclaim ? — 

Why sleeps the thunder ? Now, Lorenzo ! now, 

His best friend's couch the rank adulterer 

Ascends secure ; and laughs at gods and men. 960 

Prepost'rous madmen, void of fear or shame, 

Lay then' crimes bare to these chaste eyes of heav'n ; 

Yet shrink and shudder at a mortal's sight. 

Were moon and stars for villains only made ; 

To guide, yet screen them, with tenebrious hght ? 965 

No ; they were made to fashion the sublime 

Of human hearts, and wiser make the wise. 

THE ANCIENT SAGES. 

Those ends were answer'd once ; when mortals hved 
Of stronger wing, of aquihne ascent 

In theory subhme. O how unlike 970 

Those vermin of the night, this moment sung, 
Who crawl on earth, and on her venom feed ! 
Those ancient sages, human stars ! They met 
Their brothers of the skies, at midnight hour ; 
Their counsel ask'd ; and, what they ask'd, obey'd. 975 

950. Earths his treasures : Hides them under ground. 

951. The mole : The miser, compared figuratively to the mole — an animal 
which bores holes in the earth. 

965. Tenebrious: Dusky. 

969. Of aquiline ascent : Of ascent like an eagle. 



NIGHT IX. 455 

The Stagirite, and Plato, he who drank 

The poison'd bowl, and he of Tiisculum, 

"With him of Corduba (immortal names !) 

In these unbounded and Elysian walks, 

An area fit for gods, and godlike men, 980 

They took their nightly round, thro' i-adiant paths 

976. The Stagirite : Aristotle, so called from Stagyra, where he was born, 
B. C. 384. He was the founder of the Peripatetic sect of philosophers, so 
nanned, either from his walking about when he instructed his disciples, or 
from the public walk in the Lyceum, which he and his disciples were in 
the habit of frequenting. He was the teacher of Alexander, usually sur- 
named the Great. 

Plato, an Athenian philosopher, was born at Ji^gina, B. C. 429. He was 
for a few years a pupil of Socrates, who drank the poison'' d bowl, to which he 
was sentenced on insufficient grounds, in his seventieth year, having been 
born near Athens, B. C. 469. 

Plato was the head of the Academic sect^ so called from the academy, or 
public grove, in the suburbs of Athens, where he taught for many years. 
The method of instruction originated, or, at least, ]mrsued, by Socrates, de- 
serves mention. His custom was, to propose a series of questions to those 
with whom he conversed, in order to lead them to some unforeseen conclu- 
sion. He first gained assent to some obvious truths, and then obliged the 
admission of others related to them, or like them. Not employing direct 
argument or persuasion, he led the person he was instructing to deduce the 
truths of which he desired to convince him, as a necessary consequence 
from his own concessions. He commonly concealed his design until the in- 
structed had advanced too far to recede. 

977. He of Tusculum : Cicero, the great Roman orator, whose favourite 
residence was at this place, about twelve miles from Rome, remarkable for 
the beauty of its situation, and much resorted to in the summer season by 
the wealthy citizens of Rome. The scene of the " Tusculan Disputations" 
was laid here. Cicero embraced and defended, in the form of dialogue, the 
doctrines of the Platonic philosophy. His birth occurred B. C. 107. 

978. Him of Corduba : Corduba, in Spain, was the birthplace of both the 
Senecas, and of Lucan the poet. The younger Seneca, a Roman orator, and 
at one time the tutor of the emperor Nero, is probably here referred to. He 
put himself to death at the command of his imperial and cruel master. He 
was more severe, ascetic, and self-denying in his pithy and pointed writings 
as a philosopher, than in his practice. He was theoretically, but not prac- 
tically, a high stoic, and has delivered many valuable sentiments, that have 
been much admired. 



456 THE CONSOLATION. 

By seraphs trod ; instructed, cliiefly, thus, 
To tread in their bright footsteps here below ; 
To walk in worth still brighter than the skies. 
There they contracted their contempt of earth ; 985 

Of hopes eternal kindled, there, the fire ; 
There, as in near approach, they glow'd, and gi-ew 
(Great visitants !) more intimate with God, 
More worth to men, more joyous to themselves. 
Through various \^rtues, they, with ardour, ran 990 

The zodiac of then learn'd, illustrious hves. 
In Christian hearts, for a pagan zeal ! 
A needful, but opprobrious pray'r ! As much 
Our ardour less, as gi'eater is our hght. 

How monstrous this in morals ! Scarce more strange 995 
Would this phenomenon in our nature strike, 
A sun that froze us, or a star that warm'd. 

THE DOCTRIXES OF THE ANCIENT PHILOSOPHERS. 

What taught these heroes of the moral world ? 
To these thou giv'st thy praise, give credit too. 
These doctors ne'er were pension'd to deceive thee ; 1000 

And Pagan tutoi-s are thy taste. — They taught, 
That, narrow \iews betray to misery : 
That, wise it is to comprehend the whole : 
That, virtue rose from nature ; ponder'd well, 
The single base of virtue built to heav'n : 1005 

That, God and natm-e our attention claim : 
That, natm-e is the glass reflecting God, 
As, by the sea, reflected is the sun. 
Too glorious to be gazed on in his sphere : 

989. More worth to men: More valuable, or useful, to meu. 

991. The zodiac : That belt of the heavens in which the sun and the 
planets, the brightest orbs of the sky, make their revolutions, to which 
answer the illustrious sages just alluded to. 

993. Opprobrious prayer: One that involves reproach to Christians, or 
implies that they are greatly deficient. 



NIGHT IX. 



457 



That, mind immortal loves immortal aims : 1010 

That, boundless mind affects a boundless space : 

That, vast surveys, and the subhme of things, 

The soul assimilate, and make her great : 

That, therefore, heav'n her glories, as a fund 

Of inspiration, thus spreads out to man. 1015 

Such are theu- doctrines ; such the night inspired. 

THE SOUL, MADE TO WALK THE SKIES. 

And what more tme ? What truth of greater weight ? 
The soul of man was made to walk the skies ; 
Dehghtful outlet of her prison here ! 

There, disincumber'd from her chains, the ties 1020 

Of toys terrestrial, she can rove at large ; 
There, freely can respire, dilate, extend. 
In fiill proportion let loose all her pow'i-s ; 
And, undeluded, grasj^t something great. 
Nor, as a stranger, does she wander there ; 1025 

But, wonderful herself, thi'ough wonder strays ; 
Contemplating then- grandem*, finds her own ; 
Dives deep in their economy divine, 
Sits high in judgment on their various laws. 
And, like a master, judges not amiss. 1030 

Hence greatly pleased, and justly proud, the soul 
Grows conscious of her birth celestial ; breathes 
More life, more vigoui-, in her native ah ; 
And feels herself at home among the stai-s ; 
And, feehng, emulates her country's praise. 1035 

What call we, then, the firmament, Lorenzo ? — 
As earth the body, since the skies sustain 
The soul -with food that gives immortal life. 
Call it. The noble pastm-e of the mind, 
Which there expatiates, strengthens, and exults, 1040 

1011. Affects: Desires and seeks. 
1035. Emulates : Ambitiously desires. 
1037. As earth (sustains) the body, 
20 



458 THE CONSOLATION. 

And riots throiigli the luxuries of thought. 

Call it, The garden of the Deity, 

Blossom'd Avith stars, redundant in the gTowth 

Of fi'uit ambrosial ; moral fruit to man. 

Call' it. The breast-plate of the true High-priest, 1045 

Ardent with gems oracular, that give. 

In points of highest moment, right response ; 

And ill neglected, if we prize our peace. 

A TRUE ASTROLOGY. 

Thus, have we found a true astrology ; 
Thus, have we found a new and noble sense 1050 

In which alone stars govern human fates. 
O that the stars (as some have feign'd) let fall 
Bloodshed, and havock, on embattled realms, 
And rescued monarchs from so black a guilt ! 
Boui'bon ! this wish how gen'rous in a foe ! 1055 

Wouldst thou be great, wouldst thou become a god, 
And stick thy deathless name among the stars, 
For mighty conquests on a needle's point ? 
Instead of forging chains for foreigners, 

Bastile thy tutor. Grandeur all thy aim ? 1060 

As yet thou know'st not what it is : how great, 
How glorious, then, ajipears the mind of man, 
Wlien in it all the stai-s and j^lanets roll ! 

1046. Ardent ivith gems oracidar : Brilliant with gems which were em- 
ployed in giving responses from God to the Hebrew people in matters of 
duty, or in circumstances of difficulty 

1055. Bourbon : The king of France, Louis XV. 

1060. JBastile thy tutor : Confine thy tutor to the Bastile. This was an 
old prison in Paris, erected in 1369, for a state prison, and employed at times 
in a most unprincipled manner by the French monarchs, as a place of per- 
petual confinement for the objects of their fear, suspicion, or hatred. The 
people of France, in their rage against the long-standing abuses of monarchy, 
rose in their might in 1789, and demolished this place of cruelty, oppression, 
and horror. 

1063. The meaning is, when in its conceptions, and among its cherished 
objects of consideration and thought, are found the stars and the planets. 






NIGHT IX. 459 

And what it seems, it is : great objects make 

Great minds, enlarging as theii* views enlarge ; 1065 

Those still more godlike, as these more divine. 

And more divine than these, thou canst not see. 
Dazzled, o'erpower'd, with the dehcioiis draught 
Of miscellaneous splendours, how I reel 

From thought to thought, inebriate, without end ! 1070 

An Eden, this ! a Paradise unlost ! 
I meet the Deity in ev'iy view. 
And tremble at my nakedness before him ! 
O that I could but reach the tree of hfe ! 
For here it grows, unguarded from our taste ; 1075 

No flaming sword denies our entrance here : 
Would man but gather, he might live for ever. 

THE MATHEMATICAL GLORIES OF THE SKIES. 

Lorenzo, much of moral hast thou seen. 
Of curious arts art thou more fond ? Then mark 
The mathematic glories of the skies, 1080 

In number, weight, and measure, all ordain'd. 
Lorenzo's boasted builders, chance, and fate, 
Are left to finish his aerial tow'rs : 
Wisdom and choice, their well-known characters 
Here deep impress, and claim it for their own. 1085 

Though splendid all, no splendour void of use : 
Use rivals beauty ; art contends with pow'r ; 
No wanton waste, amid effuse expense ; 
The great Economist adjusting all 

To prudent pomp, magnificently wise. 1090 

How rich the prospect ! and for ever new ! 

1064-5. There is great practical value in this suggestion. Our minds 
take their character of greatness or littleness, of purity or baseness, from 
the nature of the objects which we are most in the habit of contemplating. 
We have the power to direct our attention to such as we choose ; and hence 
our responsibility to acquire an elevated, virtuous, and religious character. 

1088. Effuse: Profuse, large. 



460 THE CONSOLATION". 

And newest to the man that views it most ; 

For newer still in infinite succeeds. 

Then, these aerial racers, O how swift ! 

How the shaft loiters from the strongest string ! 1095 

Spirit alone can distance the career. 

Orb above orb ascending without end ! 

Circle in circle, without end, enclosed ! 

AYheel within wheel ; Ezekiel, like to thine ! 

Like thine, it seems a ^dsion or a dream ; 1100 

Though seen, we labour to believe it true ! 

What involution ! What extent ! Wliat swarms 

Of worlds, that laugh at earth ! Immensely great ! 

Immensely distant from each other's spheres ! 

What, then, the wondrous space through which they I'oU ? 

At once it quite ingulfs all human thought; 1106 

'Tis comprehension's absolute defeat. 

WONDERFUL ORDER OF THE HEAVENLF BODIES. 

Nor think thou seest a wild disorder here : 
Through this illustrious chaos to the sight. 
Arrangement neat, and chastest order, reign. 1110 

The path prescribed, inviolably kept, 
Upbraids the lawless sallies of mankind. 
Worlds, ever thwarting, never interfere : 
What knots are tied ! How soon are they dissolved, 

1094. Aerial raceis : The stars and planets, in their real or apparent 
motions, greatly excelling in velocity the arrow projected from the strong- 
est bow. 

1096. Can distance the career : Can leave them behind in the race. 

1109. Like to thine: Ezek. x. 9, 10. 

1111-12. The moral reflection here suggested is impressive and valu- 
able. 

1113. Thwarting: Crossing each other's path. 

1114-15. The author's wit is discernible in these lines. Because the 
orbitual paths of the heavenly bodies are apparently intricate and perplexed, 
he speaks of them under the term knot ; and as the marriage union, on 



NIGHT IX. 461 

And set the seeming married planets free ! 1115 

They rove for ever, without error rove ; 

Confusion unconfused ! nor less admire 

This tumult untumultuous ; all on wing ! 

In motion, all ! yet what profound repose ! 

What fervid action, yet no noise! as awed 1120 

To silence by the presence of their Lord ; 

Or hush'd, by His command, in love to man, 

And bid let fall soft beams on human rest, 

Restless themselves. On yon cerulean plain, 

In exultation to their God, and thine, 1125 

They dance, they sing eternal jubilee. 

Eternal celebration of His praise. 

But, since their song arrives not at our ear. 

Their dance perplex'd exhibits to the sight 

Fair hieroglyphic of His peerless pow'r. 1130 

Mark how the labyrinthian turns they take, 

The circles intricate, and mystic maze, 

account of its firmness and indissolubleness, is sometimes denoted by the 
same term, he speaks of the planets as seemingly married. 

1116. Error : Mistake, or taking a wrong direction. 

1117-24. A pleasing series of contrasts is found in these lines. 

1120. No noise: Ps. xix., "No speech or language: their voice is not 
heard." 

1124. Cerulean: Azure, bluish. 

1130. Hieroglyphic: Sacred symbol. 

1131. Labyrinthian turns: The word labyrinth denotes a place which, 
on account of its inextricable windings, is difficult to pass through without 
losing one's self. Ancient history (says Brande) gives an account of four 
celebrated labyrinths — the Cretan, Egyptian, Lemnian, and Italian. Of 
these, the Cretan is most celebrated in historical and mythological writings ; 
but the Egyptian was by far the most important both in extent and mag- 
nificence, being an edifice composed of twelve palaces, all contained within 
the compass of one wall, and communicating with each other. It had only 
one entrance ; but the innumerable turnings and windings of the terraces 
and rooms of which it consisted, rendered it impossible for those who had 
once entered within its walls to get out without a guide. It is said to have 
been designed either as a burial-place for the Egyptian kings, or for the 
preservation of sacred crocodiles, the chief objects of Egyptian idolatry. 



462 THE CONSOLATION. 

Weave the grand cipher of Omnipotence ; 
To gods, how great ! how legible to man ! 

Leaves so much wonder greater wonder still ? 1135 

Where are the pillars that support the skies ? 
What more than Atlantean shoulder props 
Th' incumbent load ? What magic, what strange art, 
In fluid air these pond'rous orbs sustains ? 
Who would not think them hung in golden chains? — 1140 
And so they are ; in the high will of Heav'n, 
Which fixes all ; makes adamant of air, 
Or air of adamant ; makes all of nought, 
Or nought of all ; if such the dread decree. 

Imagine from their deep foundations torn 1145 

The most gigantic sons of earth, the broad 
And tow'ring Alps, all tost into the sea ; 
And, light as down, or volatile as air, 
Their bulks enormous, dancing on the waves, 
In time and measure exquisite; while all 1150 

The winds, in emulation of the spheres, 
Tune their sonorous instruments aloft, 
The concert swell, and anunate the ball. — 
Would this appear amazing ? What, then, worlds, 
In a far thinner element sustain'd, 1155 

And acting the same part, with greater skill. 
More rapid movement, and for noblest ends ? 

More obvious ends to pass, — are not these stars 

1133. Cipher : A secret or disguised manner of writing, not intelligible to 
the uninstructed. 

1137. Mlantean shoulder : Atlas is alluded to. He was a king of Mauri- 
tania, in the northwestern part of Africa. The fable is, that he was 
changed by Perseus into a high mountain. Either from this circumstance, 
or from the previous astronomical discoveries of the king, he is said to sup- 
port the heavens^ 

1142, Adamant: A name denoting a substance of extreme hardness, 
hence applied to the diamond. 

1151. Of the spheres: (Of the music) of the spheres. Compare note on 
549 



NIGHT IX. 463 

The seats majestic, proud imperial thrones, 

On which angehc delegates of heav'n, 1160 

At certain periods, as the Sov'reign nods. 

Discharge high trusts of vengeance, or of love ; 

To clothe, in outward grandeur, grand design, 

And acts most solemn still more solemnize ? 

THE STARS PROCLAIM MAn's IMMORTALITY. 

Ye citizens of air ! what ardent thanks, 1165 

"What full effusion of the grateful heart. 
Is due from man, indulged in such a sight ! 
A sight so noble ! and a sight so kind ! 
It drops new truths at ev'ry new survey ! 
Feels not Lorenzo something stir within, 1170 

That sweeps away all period ? As these spheres 
Measure duration, they no less inspire 
The godlike hope of ages without end. 
The boundless space, thro' which these rovers take 
Their restless roam, suo-o-ests the sister thoug^ht 1175 

Of boundless time. Thus, by kind nature's skill, 
To man unlabour'd, that important guest, 
Eternity, finds entrance at the sight : 
And an eternity, for man ordain'd ; 

Or these his destined midnight counsellors, 1180 

The stars, had never whisper'd it to man. 
Nature informs, but ne'er insults, her sons. 
Could she then kindle the most ardent wish 
To disappoint it ? — That is blasphemy. 

Thus, of thy creed a second article, 1185 

Momentous, as th' existence of a God, 
Is found (as I conceive) where rarely sought ; 
A.nd thou mayst read thy soul immortal, here, 

1165. Ye citizens of air : Stars and planets, 
1171. Period: I imit. 



464 THE CONSOLATION. 



LESSONS FROM THE MOON. 

Here, then, Lorenzo, on these glories dwell ; 
Nor want the gilt, illuminated roof, 1190 

That calls the wretched gay to dark dehghts. 
Assembhes ! — this is one divinely bright ; 
Here, unendangered in health, wealth, or fame. 
Range, through the fairest, and the Sultan scorn. 
He, wise as thou, no crescent holds so fair, 1195 

As that, which on his turban awes a world ; 
And thinks the moon is proud to copy him. 
Look on her, and gain more than worlds can give, 
A mind superior to the charms of pow'r. 
Thou muffled in delusions of this life! 1200 

Can yonder moon tm-n ocean in his bed. 
From side to side, in constant ebb and flow, 
And purify from stench his wat'ry realms ? 
And fails her moral influence ? Wants she pow'r 
To tm-n Lorenzo's stubborn tide of thought 1205 

From stagnating on earth's infected shore. 
And purge from nuisance his corrupted heart ? 
Fails her attraction, when it draws to heav'n ? 
Nay, and to what thou valuest more, earth's joys ? 
Minds elevate, and panting for unseen, 1210 

And defecate from sense, alone obtain 
Full relish of existence undeflower'd, 
The life of life, the zest of worldly bliss. 
All else on earth amounts — to what ? To this : 

1190. Want: Desire. 

1194. Sultan: The emperor of Turkey. 

1195. No crescent holds : No increasing or new moon regards so fair or 
beautiful as the figure of it inscribed on his turban. It is the distinguishing 
figure also on the Turkish standard. 

1210-11, jE/em^e, elevated. Defecate: Defecated or purified. 



NIGHT IX. 465 

* Bad to be suffer'd ; blessings to be left :' 1215 

Earth's richest inventory boasts no more. 

THE FIELD OP CELESTIAL CONTEMPLATION, BOUNDLESS. 

Of higher scenes be then the call obey'd. 
O let me gaze ! — Of gazing there's no end. 
O let me think ! — Thought too is wilder'd here ; 
In mid-way flight imagination tires ; 1220 

Yet soon reprunes her wing to soar anew, 
Her point unable to forbear, or gain ; 
So great the pleasure ! so profound the plan ! 
A banquet, this, where men and angels meet, 
Eat the same manna, mingle earth and heav'n. 1225 

How distant some of these nocturnal suns ! 
So distant, (says the sage,) 'twere not absurd 
To doubt, if beams, set out at nature's birth, 
Are yet arrived at this so foreign world ; 
Though nothing half so rapid as their flight. 1230 

An eye of awe an^ wonder let me roll. 
And roll for ever : who can satiate sight 
In such a scene ? in such an ocean wide 
Of deep astonishment ? where depth, height, breadth. 
Are lost in their extremes ; and where, to count 1235 

The thick-sown glories in this field of fire, 

1215. Bad things are to be endured, good things are to be left behind. 

There are some exquisitely beautiful things said about the moon in Mrs. 
Ellis' " Poetry of Life." Among other things she says : We cannot look 
upon the stars without being struck with a sense of their distance, their 
unattainable height, the immeasurable extent of space that lies between the 
celestial fields which they traverse with a perpetual harmony of motion, 
and the low world of petty cares where we lie grovelling. But the moon, 
the placid moon, is just high enough for sublimity — -just near enough for 
love. So benign, and bland, and softly beautiful is her ever-beaming coun- 
tenance, that vi^hen personifying, as we always do, the moon, she seems to 
us rather as purified than as having been always pure. 

1221. Reprunes: Trims again. 

1227. The sas^e : Huygens. 
20* 



466 THE CONSOLATION. 

Perhaps a seraph's computation fails. 

Now, go, ambition ! boast thy boundless might 

In conquest, o'er the tenth part of a grain. 

MIRACLES COMPARED. 

And yet Lorenzo calls for miracles, 1240 

To give his tott'ring faith a sohd base. 
Why call for less than is already thine ? 
Thou art no novice in theology ; 
What is a miracle ? — 'Tis a reproach, 

'Tis an imphcit satire, on mankind; 1245 

And while it satisfies, it censures too. 
To common sense, great nature's course proclaims 
A Deity : when mankind falls asleep, 
A miracle is sent, as an alarm ; 

To wake the world, and prove Him o'er again, 1250 

By recent argument, but not more strong. 
Say, which imports more plenitude of pow'r, 
Or nature's laws to fix, or to repeal ! 
To make a sun, or stop his mid career ? 

To countermand his orders, and send back 1255 

The flaming courier to the frighted east, 
Warm'd, and astonish'd, at his evening ray ? 
Or bid the moon, as with her journey tired. 
In Ajalon's soft flow'ry vale repose ? 

Great things are these; still greater, to create. 12 GO 

From Adam's bow'r look down through the whole train 
Of miracles ; — resistless is their pow'r ? 
They do not, cannot, more amaze the mind. 
Than this, call'd unmii-aculous survey, 

If duly weigh'd, if rationally seen, 1265 

If seen with human eyes. The brute, indeed, 

1248. Falls asleep : That, is, in idolatry, vice, and ungodliness. 
1253. Or nature's laws to fix : Whether to fix, &c. 

1259. In Ajalonh soft vale : The miracle here spoken of is recorded in the 
book of Joshua, x, 12 — 14. 



NIGHT IX. 467 

Sees nought but spangles here ; the fool, no more. 

Say'st thou, ' The course of nature governs all V 

The course of nature is the art of God. 

The mn-acles thou call'st for, this attest ; 1270 

For say, could nature nature's course control ? 

ASTRONOMICAL INQUIRIES. 

But, miracles apart, who sees Him not, 
Nature's controller, author, guide, and end ? 
Who turns his eye on nature's midnight face, 
But must inquire — ' What hand behind the scene, 1275 

Wliat arm almighty, put these wheeling globes 
In motion, and wound up the vast machine ? 
Who rounded in his palm these spacious orbs ? 
Who bowl'd them flaming thro' the dark profound, 
Num'rous as glitt'ring gems of morning dew, 1280 

Or sparks from populous cities in a blaze. 
And set the bosom of old night on fire ? 
Peopled her desert, and made horror smile ? 
Or, if the military style delights thee, 

(For stars have fought their battles, leagued with man) 1285 
' Who marshals this bright host ? enrolls their names ? 
Appoints their post, their marches, and returns. 
Punctual, at stated periods ? who dis])ands 
These vet'ran troops, their final duty done, 
If e'er disbanded V — He, whose potent word, 1290 

1272-83. Who sees Him not, &c. : Dr. Cheever remarks : What grand lines 
are these ! The sublinaity of Young rises sometimes higher than that of 
Dante, as his devotion is more direct and scriptural. The grandeur of that 
image or conception of the spacious orbs bowV d flaming through the dark pro- 
found, numerous as glittering gems of morning dew^ could scarcely be ex- 
ceeded. It is like the image of the same great poet, of Olden Time, sternly 
driving his ploughshare over creation. The poem of the Night Thoughts is 
full of great and rich materials for the mind and heart : it is one of the best 
demonstrations in our language of the absurdity of that strange idea of Dr. 
Johnson, that devotion is not a fit subject for poetry ! 

1279. Profound: Depths of space. 



468 THE CO^"S0LATI0N 

Like the loud trumpet, levied first their pow'rs 

In night's inglorious empire, where they slept 

In beds of darkness ; arm'd them with fierce flames, 

AiTanged, and disciphned, and clothed in gold ; 

And call'd them out of chaos to the field, 1295 

Where now they war with vice and unhelief. 

O let us join this army ! Joining these, 

Will give us hearts intrepid, at that hour, 

When brio'hter flames shall cut a darker nio*ht ; 

When these strong demonstrations of a God 1300 

Shall hide then* heads, or tumble from their spheres, 

And one eternal curtain cover all ! 

A PRAYER TO THE STARS, AND TO THEIR GREAT AUTHOR. 

Struck at that thought, as new awaked, I lift 
A more enhghten'd eye, and read the stars, 
To man still more propitious ; and their aid 1305 

(Though guiltless of idolatry) implore. 
Nor longer rob them of their noblest name. 
O ye dividers of my time ! Ye bright 
Accountants of my days, and months, and years, 
In your fair calendar distinctly mark'd ! 1310 

Since that authentic, radiant register, 
Tho' man inspects it not, stands good against him ; 
Since you, and years, roll on, tho' man stands still ; 
Teach me my days to number, and apply 
My trembling heart to wisdom; now beyond 1315 

All shadow of excuse for foohng on, 
Age smooths our path to prudence ; sweeps aside 
The snares, keen appetites, and passion, spread 
To catch stray souls : and wo to that grey head, 
Whose folly would undo wliat age has done ! 1320 

Aid then, aid, all ye stars ! — Much rather. Thou, 
Great Artist ! Thou, whose finger set aright 
This exquisite machine, with all its wheels, 
Though intervolved, exact ; and pointing out 



NIGHT IX. 469 

Life's rapid and irrevocable flight, 1325 

With such an index fair, as none can miss. 

Who hfts an eye, nor sleeps till it is closed. 

Open mine eye, dread Deity ! to read 

The tacit doctrine of thy works ; to see 

Things as they are, unalter'd, through the glass 1330 

Of worldly wishes. Time ! Eternity ! 

('Tis these mismeasured, ruin all mankind) 

Set them before me ; let me lay them both 

In equal scale, and learn their various weight. 

Let time appear a moment, as it is ; 1335 

And let eternity's full orb, at once. 

Turn on my soul, and strike it into heav'n. 

When shall I see far more than charms me now ? 

Gaze on creation's model in Thy breast 

Unveil'd, nor wonder at the transcript more ? 1340 

When, this vile, foreign dust, which smothers all 

That travel earth's deep vale, shall I shake off ? 

When shall my soul her incarnation quit. 

And, re-adopted to thy blest embrace, 

Obtain her apotheosis in Thee ? 1345 



Dost think, Lorenzo, this is wand'ring wide ? 
No, 'tis directly striking at the mark : 
To wake thy dead devotion, was my point ; 
And how I bless night's consecrating shades, 
Which to a temple turn an universe ; 1350 

Fill us with great ideas, full of heav'n, 
And antidote the pestilential earth ! 
In ev'ry storm, that either frowns, or falls. 
What an asylum has the soul in pray'r ! 
And what a fane is this, in which to pray ! 1355 

And what a God must dwell in such a fane ! 

1345. Apotheosis : Deification, in a modified and subordinate sense. 



470 THE CONSOLATION. 

O what a ^eniue must inform the skies ! 

And is Lorenzo's salamander heart 

Cold, and untouch'd, amid these sacred fires ? 

O ye noctm-nal sparks ! Ye glowing embers, 1360 

On heav'n's broad hearth ! who burn, or burn no more, 

"Who blaze, or die, as great Jehovah's breath 

Or blows you, or forbears ; assist my song ; 

Pour your whole influence ; exorcise his heart, 

So long possess'd ; and bring him back to man. 1365 

EXTENDED VIEWS ENLARGE THE MIND. 

And is Lorenzo a demurrer still ? 
Pride in thy parts provokes thee to contest 
Truths, which, contested, put thy parts to shame. 
E'or shame they more Lorenzo's head than heart ; 
A faithless heart, how despicably small ! 1370 

Too strait, aught great or gen'rous to receive ! 
Fill'd with an atom ! fill'd, and foul'd, with self! 
And self mistaken ; self, that lasts an hour ! 
Instincts, and passions, of the nobler kind, 
Lie suffocated there; or they alone, 1375 

Reason apart, would wake high hope ; and open, 
To ravish'd thought, that mtellectual sphere, 
Where order, wisdom, goodness, providence, 
Their endless miracles of love display, 

And promise all the truly great desire. 1380 

The mind that would be happy, must be great ; 
Great, in its wishes ; great, in its surveys. 

1357 Inform the skies : Give to the skies their form. 

1358. Salamander heart : The salamander is a species of lizard, and 
according to the vulgar, but mistaken notion, was supposed to be able to 
endure the intensest lire without pain or change. 

1363. Or blows: Either blows. 

1364. Exorcise his heart: Drive out the demon from his heart. 

1366. Demurrer: Doubter. 

1367. Pride in thy parts : Pride of intellect. 



NIGHT IX. 



All 



Extended views a naiTow mind extend ; 

Push out its corrugate, expansive make, 

Which, ere long, more than planets shall embrace. 1385 

A man of compass makes a man of worth : 

Divine contemplate, and become divine. 

AN APPEAL TO THE SCEPTIC. 

As man was made for glory, and for bhss, 
All littleness is an approach to wo : 

Open thy bosom, set thy wishes wide, 1390 

And let in manhood ; let in happiness ; 
Admit the boundless theatre of thought 
From nothing, up to God ; which makes a man. 
Take God from nature, nothing great is left ; 
Man's mind is in a pit, and nothing sees ; 1395 

Man's heart is in a jakes, and loves the mire. 
Emerge from thy profound ; erect thine eye ; 
See thy distress ! How close art thou besieged ! 
Besieged by nature, the proud sceptic's foe ! 
Enclosed by these innumerable woi'lds, 1400 

Sparkling conviction on the darkest mind, 
- As in a golden net of Providence, 
How art thou caught, sure captive of belief ! 
From this thy blest captivity, what art. 

What blasphemy to reason, sets thee free ! 1405 

This scene is Heav'n's indulgent violence. 
Canst thou bear up against this tide of glory ? 
What is earth, bosom'd in these ambient orbs, 
But, faith in God imposed, and press'd on man ? 
Dar'st thou still litigate thy desp'rate cause, 1410 

Spite of these num'rous, awful witnesses, 
And doubt the deposition of the skies ? 
O how laborious is thy way to ruin ! 

1384. Corrugate, expansive make : Folded, w^rinkled, not expanded, yot ex- 
pansible structure. 

1396, Man's heart is immersed in a filthy pit, and loves the mire. 



412 



THE COKSOLATION. 



GOD VISIBLE IN CREATION. 



Laborious ? 'tis impracticable quite : 
To sink beyond a doubt, in this debate, 1415 

With all his weight of wisdom, and of will, 
And crime flagitious, I defy a fool. 
Some wish they did ; but no man disbelieves. 
God is a spirit ; spirit cannot strike 

These gross, material organs : God by man 1420 

As much is seen, as man a God can see, 
In these astonishing exploits of power. 
What order, beauty, motion, distance, size ! 
Conception of design, how exquisite ! 

How complicate, in their divine police ! 1425 

Apt means ! great ends ! consent to general good ! — 
Each attribute of these material gods, 
So long (and that with specious pleas) adored, 
A separate conquest gains o'er rebel thought ; 
And leads in triumph the whole mind of man. 1430 

Lorenzo, this may seem harangue to thee ; 
Such all is apt to seem, that thwarts our will. 
And dost thou, then, demand a simple-proof 
Of this great master-moral of the skies, 

Unskill'd, or disinclin'd, to read it there? 1435 

Since 'tis the basis, and all drops without it. 
Take it, in one compact, unbroken chain. 
Such proof insists on an attentive ear ; 
'Twill not make one amid a mob of thoughts, 
And, for thy notice, struggle with the world. 1440 

Retne ; — the world shut out ; — thy thoughts call home ; — 

1425. Police: Regulation. 

1426. Consent : Adaptation. 

1434. Master-moral : Chief doctrine or lesson. 
1438. Ins\ 
appreciated. 



NIGHT IX. 473 j 

1 

Imagination's airy wing repress : ^ 

Lock up tliy senses ; — let thy passion stir ; — i 

"Wake all to reason ; — let her reign alone ; — 

Then, in thy soul's deep silence, and the depth 1445 ; 

Of nature's silence, midnight, thus inquire, : 

As I have done ; and shall inquire no more. i 

In nature's channel, thus the questions run : l 

ARGUMENTS FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD. 1 

' What am I ? and from whence ? — I nothing know, ] 

But that I am ; and, since I am, conclude 1450 

Something eternal ! had there e'er been nought, ; 

Nought still had been : eternal there must be. — \ 

But what eternal ? — why not human race ? \ 

And Adam's ancestors without an end ? — i 

That's hard to be conceived ; since every link 1455 j 

Of that long chain'd succession is so frail : j 

Can every part depend, and not the whole ? ] 

Yet grant it true ; new difficulties rise ; \ 

I'm still quite out at sea ; nor see the shore. I 

Whence earth, and these bright orbs ? — eternal too ? 1460 '! 

Grant matter was eternal ; still these orbs ■ 

Would want some other father ? — much design l 

Is seen in all their motions, all their makes : j 

Design implies intelligence, and art : I 

That can't be from themselves — or man ; that art 1465 ] 

Man scarce can comprehend, could man bestow ? ; 

And nothing greater, yet allow'd, than man. — \ 

Who, motion, foreign to the smallest grain, '^ 
Shot through vast masses of enormous weight ? 

1451. Had there, &c. : Had there ever been a time when no thing or ■ 
being whatever existed. ^ 

1452. Eternal there must be: Dr. Thomas Brown has an argument on this \ 
topic well worth reading, in his Pliilosophy of the Human Mind, vol. iii., i 
434-6. ; 



4*74 THE CONSOLATION. 

"vVTio bid brute matter's restive lump assume 1470 

Such various forms, and gave it wings to fly ? 

Has matter innate motion ? Then each atom, 

Asserting its indisputable right 

To dance, would form an univei'se of dust. 

Has matter none ? Then whence these glorious forms 14*75 

And boundless flights, from shapeless, and reposed ? 

Has matter more than motion ? Has it thought, 

Judgment, and genius ? Is it deeply learn'd 

In mathematics ? Has it framed such laAvs, 

Which, but to guess, a Newton made immortal? — 1480 

If so, how each sage atom laughs at me, 

Who think a clod inferior to a man ! 

If art, to form ; and counsel, to conduct ; 

And that with greater far, than humble skill. 

Resides not in each block ; — a Godhead reigns. — ■ 1485 

Grant, then, in\dsible, eternal, Mind ; 

That granted, all is solved. — But, granting that, 

Draw I not o'er me a still darker cloud ? 

Grant I not that which I can ne'er conceive ? 

A being without origin, or end ! 1490 

Hail, human liberty ! There is no God — 

Yet, why ? On either scheme that knot subsists ; 

Subsist it must, in God, or human race ; 

If in the last, how many knots beside, 

Indissoluble all ? — Why choose it there, 1495 

Where, chosen, still subsist ten thousand more ? 

Reject it, where, that chosen, all the rest 

Dispersed, leave reason's whole horizon clear ? 

This is not reason's dictate : reason says, 

Close with the side where one grain turns the scale. 1500 

What vast preponderance is here ! Can reason 

With louder voice exclaim — Believe a God ? 

And reason heard, is the sole mark of man. 

1475. None: No innate motion. 



jjiGHT ix;, 47$ 

"What things impossible must man think true, 

On any other system ! and, how strange 1505 

To disbeheve, through mere creduhty !' 

If, in this chain, Lorenzo finds no flaw, 
Let it for ever bind him to behef 
And where the hnk, in which a flaw he finds ? 
And, if a God there is, that God how great ! 1510 

How great that Power, whose providential care 
Through these bright orbs' dark centres darts a ray ! 
Of nature universal threads the whole ! 
Ind hangs creation, Mke a precious gem. 
Though httle, on the footstool of his throne! 1515 

That little gem, how large ! A weight let fall 
From a fix'd star, in ages can it reach 
This distant earth ? Say, then, Lorenzo ! where, 
Where ends this mighty building ? Where begin 
The suburbs of creation? Where the wall, 1520 

Whose battlements look o'er into the vale 
Of nonexistence ? Nothing's strange abode ! 
Say, at what point of space Jehovah di'opp'd 
His slacken'd hne, and laid his balance by ; 
Weigh'd worlds, and measured infinite, no more ? 1525 

Where rears his terminating pillar high 
Its extramundane head ? and says, to gods. 
In character illustrious as the sun. 

/ stand, the plants proud period ; I pronounce 

The work accomplish d ; the creation closed : 1530 

Shout, all ye gods ! nor shout, ye gods alone ; 

Of all that lives, or, if devoid of life. 

That rests, or rolls, ye heights, and depths, resound ! 

Resound ! resound ! ye depths, and heights, resound ! 

1527. Extramundane head: Its top without or beyond the limits of 
created worlds. 

1529. Period: Limit. 



476 THE CONSOLATION. 



GRAND CONCEPTIONS OF THE POWER OF THE CREATOR. 

Hard are those questions ? — Answer harder still. 1635 

Is this the sole exploit, the single birth, 
The solitary son, of Power Divine ? 
Or has th' Almighty Father, with a breath, 
Impregnated the womb of distant space ? 
Has He not bid, in various provinces, 1540 

Brother-creations the dark bowels burst 
Of night primeval ; barren, now, no more ? 
And He the central sun transpiercing all 
Those giant-generations, which disport. 

And dance, as motes, in his meridian ray ; 1545 

That ray withdrawn, benighted, or absorb'd. 
In that abyss of horror, whence they sprung ; 
While Chaos triumphs, repossess'd of all 
Rival creation ravish'd from his throne ? 
Chaos ! of nature both the womb, and grave ! 1550 

1545. As Motes; The sublimity of thought excited by this comparison, is 
worthy of admiration. In this entire connection the author's lofty and 
devout genius luxuriates, soars, and triumphs, carrying us along with a pleas- 
ing ecstasy. 

1550. Chaos! of nature^ kc. : For a history of chaos we are indebted to 
the lively fancy of the author of Paradise Lost. This line is a literal quo- 
tation, as will be seen from the extract subjoined from Book II. 891 — 916 : 

The secrets of the hoary deep, a dark 

Illimitable ocean, without bound, 

Without dimension, where length, breadth, and height, 

And time, and place, are lost; where eldest Night 

And Chaos, ancestors of Nature, hold 

Eternal anarchy, amidst the noite 

Of endless wars, and by confusion stand. 

For hot, cold, moist, and dry, four champions fierce 

Strive here for mast'ry, and to battle bring 

Their embryon atoms, &c. 

* * * * 

Into this wild abyss, 
The womb of Nature, and perhaps her grave, 
Of neither sea, nor shore, nor air, nor firp. 
But all these in their pregnant causes mix'd 
Confus'dly, and which thus must ever fight, 
Unless tir Almighty Maker them ordain 
liis dark materials to create more worlds. 



NIGHT IX. 



477 



Think'st thou my scheme, Lorenzo, spreads too wide ? 
Is this extravagant ? — No ; this is just ; 
Just, in conjecture, though 'twere false in fact. 
If 'tis an error, 'tis an error sprung 

From noble root, high thought of the Most High. 1555 

But wherefore error ? Who can prove it such ? — 
He that can set Omnipotence a bound. 
Can man conceive beyond what God can do ? 
Nothing, but quite impossible, is hard. 

He summons into being, with like ease, 1560 

A. whole creation, and a single grain. 
Speaks he the word ? a thousand worlds are born ! — 
A thousand worlds ? there's space for millions more ; 
And in what space can his great fiat faU I 
Condemn me not, cold critic ! but indulge 1565 

The warm imagination : why condemn ? 
Why not indulge such thoughts, as swell our hearts 
With fuller admiration of that Power, 
Who gives our hearts with such high thoughts to swell ? 
Why not indulge in His augmented praise ? 1570 

Darts not His glory a still brighter ray, 
The less is left to Chaos, and the realms 
Of hideous Night, where fancy strays aghast ; 
And, though most talkative, makes no report ? 

Still seems my thought enormous ? Think again ; — 1575 
Experience 'self shall aid thy lame behef. 
Glasses (that revelation to the sight !) 
Have they not led us deep in the disclose 
Of fine-spun nature, exquisitely small ; 

And, though demonstrated, still ill conceived ? 1580 

If, then, on the reverse, the mind would mount 
In magnitude, what mind can mount too far, 
To keep the balance, and creation poise 1 
Defect alone can err on such a theme : 

1572. Theless (that) is left, &c. 
1578. Disclose : Uncovering. 



478 THE CONSOLATION. 

What is too great, if we the Cause survey? 1585 

Stupendous Architect ! Thou, Thou art all I 

My soul flies up and down in thoughts of Thee, 

And finds herself but at the centre still ! 

I AM, thy name ! Existence, all thine own ! 

Creation's nothing ; flatter'd much, if styled 1590 

' The thin, the fleeting atmosphere of God.' 

O for the voice — of what ? of whom ? — What voice 
Can answer to my wants, in such ascent, 
As dares to deem one univeree too small ? 
Tell me, Lorenzo ! (for now fancy glows, 1595 

Fired in the vortex of Almighty Power) 
Is not this home creation, in the map 
Of universal nature, as a speck, 
Like fair Britannia in our httle ball ; 

Exceeding fair, and glorious for its size, 1600 

But, elsewhere, far outmeasured, far outshone ? 
In fancy (for the fact beyond us hes,) 
Canst thou not figure it, an isle, almost 
Too small for notice, in the vast of being ; 
Sever'd by mighty seas of unbuilt space 1C05 

From other realms ; from ample continents 
Of higher hfe, where nobler natives dwell ; 
Less northern, less remote from Deity, 
Glowing beneath the hue of the Supreme ; 
Where souls in excellence make haste, put forth 1610 

1/597. Home creation : This earth and its atmosphere. 

1599. Ball: The globe. 

1604. The vast (extent) of being. 

1609. The line, kc. : The equinoctial line. It will be observed that the 
figurative language of this passage is all drawn from geography. The Deity 
is conceived as dwelling over the torrid zone of the earth, as if in the neigh- 
bourhood of the sun ; and as in that region of the earth vegetation is most 
luxuriant and constant, so those v/ho dwell nearest the Deity, by meditation, 
prayer, and holy living, put forth luxuriant growths of excellence, and ripen 
soon to gods, or acquire a maturity and perfection of moral worth. 



NIGHT IX. 



479 



Luxui'iaiit gi'owtlis ; nor the late autumn wait 
Of human worth, but ripen soon to gods ? 



THE DOMINIONS OF THE SUN. 

Yet why drown fancy in such depths as these ? 
Return, presumptuous rover ! and confess 
The bounds of man ; nor blame them, as too small. 1615 

Enjoy we not full scope in what is seen ? 
Full ample the dominions of the sun ! 
Full glorious to behold ! How far, how wide, 
The matchless monarch, from his flaming thi'one, 
Lavish of lustre, throws his beams about him, 1620 

Farther, and faster, than a thought can fly, 
And feeds his planets with eternal fires ! 
This Heliopolis, by greater far. 
Than the proud tyrant of the Nile, was built ; 
And He alone, who built it, can destroy. 1625 

Beyond this city, why strays human thought ? 
One wonderful, enough for man to know ! 
One infinite, enough for man to range ! 
One fii-mament, enough for man to read ! 

O what voluminous instruction here ! 1630 

What page of wisdom is denied him ? None ; 
If learning his chief lesson makes him wise. 
Nor is instruction, here, our only gain ; 
Thei-e dwells a noble pathos in the skies, 

1615. The bounds of man : The limits of research assigned to man. 

1623. This Heliopolis : This city of the sun, as the word indicates, the sun 
being here compared to the ancient city of that name, situated near the apex 
of the Delta of the Nile, not far from modern Cairo. It was ornamented 
with a splendid tenaple of the sun. Nothing now remains of the city but a 
single obelisk. There was another city in Syria of the same name, and 
noted for a temple devoted to the same Deity. Its modern name is Baal- 
beck. 

1634. ji noble pathos in the skies: They have the power to affect our feel- 
ings in a strong and elevating manner and degree. 



480 THE CONSOLATION. 

Which warms our passions, proselytes oui* hearts. 1635 

How eloquently shines the glowing pole ! 

With what authority it gives its charge, 

Eemonstrating great truths in style subhme, 

Though silent, loud ! heard earth around ; above 

The planets heard ; and not unheard in hell : 1640 

Hell has her wonder, though too proud to praise. 

Is earth, then, more infernal ? Has she those. 

Who neither praise (Lorenzo !) nor admire ? 



THE FIRST VOLUME OF THE DEITY. 

Lorenzo's admiration, pre-engaged, 
Ne'er ask'd the moon one question ; never held 1645 

Least correspondence with a single star ; 
Ne'er rear'd an altar to the queen of heaven 
Walking in brightness ; or her train adored. 
Theii" sublunary rivals have long since 

Engross'd his whole devotion ; stars malign, 1650 

Which made their fond astronomer run mad ; 
Darken his intellect, corrupt his heart ; 
Cause him to sacrifice his fame and peace 
To momentary madness, call'd Dehght : 

Idolater, more gross than ever kiss'd 1655 

The hfted hand to Luna, or pour'd out 

1647-48. Queen of heaven walking, &c. : Job xxxi. 26, 27, "Or the moon 
walking in brightness, and my heart hath been recently enticed," &c. 

1650. Stars malign : Malignant stars. An expression used to denote the 
woridly objects that attracted and corrupted Lorenzo. It was an ancient 
superstition that the sun, moon, and planets, in certain relative positions, or 
appearing at particular conjunctures, exerted upon individuals a disastrous 
influence. 

1656. Lvma : The moon. We learn from the above quotation, that early 
as the days of Job, the moon was an object of adoration, B. C. 1520, or 
earlier according to some. 



NIGHT IX. 



481 



The blood to Jove !— THOU, to whom belongs 

All sacrifice ! thou Great Jove unfeign'd ! 

Divine Instructor ! thy first volume, this, 

For man's perusal; all in c^ipitals ! 1660 

In moon, and stars (heaven's golden alphabet !) 

Emblazed to seize the sight ; who runs may read ; 

Who reads, can understand. 'Tis unconfined 

To Christian land, or Jewry ; fairly writ, 

In language universal, to mankind ; 1665 

A language, lofty to the learn'd ; yet plain 

To those that feed the flock, or guide the plough, 

Or, from its husk, strike out the bounding grain. 

A language, w^orthy the Great Mind that speaks ! 

Preface and comment, to the sacred page! 1670 

Which oft refere its reader to the skies, 

As presupposing his first lesson there, 

And Scripture 'self a fragment, that unread. 

Stupendous book of wisdom, to the wise ! 

Stupendous book ! and open'd, Night ! by thee. 1675 

WHERE IS THE CREATOR'S THRONE? 

By thee much open'd, I confess, O Night ! 
Yet more I wish ; but how shall I prevail ! 
Say, gentle Night ! whose modest, maiden beams 
Give us a new creation, and present 

The world's great picture soften'd to the sight ; 1680 

Nay, kinder far, far more indulgent still, 

657. Jove: Jupiter, the chief god of the Romans; the same as the Zeus 
of the Greeks. 

1664. Jewry: Judea. Dan. v. 13, 

1673. That unread: The first volume, or the book of Nature, being un- 
read, unobserved. 

1675. And open'd. &c. : We discover more of the distant wonders of crea- 
tion by night than in the day-time : were it not for the night, vastly the 
greater part of them could not be discovered by us at all, in consequence of 
the blaze of sunlight. 
21 



482 THE COXSOLATIOX. 

Say, thou, -vvliose mild dominion's silver key 

Unlocks our hemisphere, and sets to view 

Worlds beyond number ; worlds conceal'd by day, 

Behind the proud and enWous star of noon ! 1685 

Canst thou not draw a deeper scene ? — and shew 

The mighty Potentate, to whom belong 

These rich regaha, pompously display'd 

To kindle that high hope ? Like him of Uz, 

I gaze around ; I search on every side — 1690 

for a glimpse of Him my soul adores ! 

As the chased hart, amid the desert waste, 

Pants for the hving stream ; for Him who made her, 

So pants the thirsty soul, amid the blank 

Of sublunary joys. Say, goddess ! where? 1695 

Where, blazes His bright com! ? Where burns His throne ? 

Thou know'st ; for thou art near Him ; by thee, round 

His grand pavihon, sacred fame reports 

The sable curtain drawn. If not, can none 

Of thy fair daughter-train, so swift of wing, 1*700 

Who travel far, discover where He dwells ? 

A star His dwelling pointed out below. 

Ye Pleiades 1 Ai'cturus ! Mazzaroth ! 

And thou, Orion ! of still keener eye ! 

Say ye, who guide the wilder'd in the waves, 1705 

1685. Envious star of noon : The sun, here represented as a person envi- 
ously concealing by his effulgence the other glories of the sky, that he 
might have our undivided admiration. 

] 689. Him of Uz : Job. '" Oh that I knew where I might find him, that 
I might even come to his seat/' &c. Job xxiii. 3, 8. 9. 

1692. jSs the chased hart. &c. : Psalm Ixiii. 

1695. Goddess: Night. 

1698. Sacred fame^ &c. : Psalm xviii. 

1700. Daughter-train: Comets. 

1702. A star, &c. : IMatthew ii. 2. 

1703-4. Ye Pleiades, &c. : Names of several constellations mentioned in 
the book of Job, chap, xxxviii. 31, 32. 

1705. The ivilder'd : Those who have lost their track. 



NIGHT IX. 483 

And bring them out of tempest into port ! 

On which hand must I bend my course to find Him ? 

These courtiei-s keep the secret of their King ; 

I wake whole nights, in vain, to steal it from them. 

I wake ; and, waking, climb Night's radiant scale, 1*710 
From sphere to sphere ; the steps by nature set 
For man's ascent ; at once to tempt, and aid ; 
To tempt his eye, and aid his towering thought ; 
Till it arrives at the gTeat goal of all. 

A JOURNEY THROUGH THE HEAVENS. 

In ardent contemplation's rapid car, 17 15 

From earth, as from my bai-rier, I set out. 
How swift I mount ! Diminish'd earth recedes ; 
I pass the moon ; and, from her farther side, 
Pierce heav'n's blue curtain ; strike into remote ; 
Where, with his lifted tube, the subtile sage 1*720 

His artificial, airy journey takes, 
And to celestial lengthens human sight. 
I pause at every planet on my road, 
And ask for Him who gives their orbs to roll. 
Their foreheads fair to shine. From Saturn's ring, 172.5 

In which, of earths an army might be lost. 
With the bold comet take my bolder flight, 
Amid those sovereign glories of the skies, 
Of independent, native lustre proud ; 

The souls of systems ! and the lords of hfe, 1730 

Through their wide empires ! — What behold I now ? 
A wilderness of wonders burning round ; 

1710. Scale: Ladder. 

1714. Goal: The end, the object aimed at; alluding to the terminating 
point of a race-course, and implying, therefore, active exertion as being used 
in reaching it. 

1720. Tube: The telescope. 

1730. The souls of systems : The suns from which planetary systems de- 
rive their light, and life, and motion (subordinately to Divine agency) . 



484 THE CONSOLATION. 

Where larger suns inhabit larger spheres ; 

Perhaps the villas of descending gods ! 

Nor halt I here ; my toil is but begun ; 1735 

'Tis but the threshold of the Deity ; 

Or, far beneath it, I am grovelling still. 

Nor is it strange ; I built on a mistake ! 

The grandeur of his works, whence folly sought 

For aid, to reason sets his glory higher; 1'740 

Who built thus high for worms (mere worms to Him ;) 

where, Lorenzo ! must the Builder dwell ? 

Pause, then ; and, for a moment, here respire — 
If human thought can keep its station here. 
AVhere am I? — Where is earth? — Nay, where art thou, 1745 
O sun ? — Is the sun turn'd recluse ? — And are 
His boasted expeditions short to mine ? — 
To mine, how short ! On nature's Alps I stand, 
And see a thousand firmaments beneath ! 
A thousand systems, as thousand gTains ! 1750 

So much a stranger, and so late arriv'd, 
How can man's curious spirit not inquire, 
What are the natives of this world sublime, 

1733. Inhabit larger spheres : Occupy a higher position. The phraseology 
is obsolete, being borrowed from the Ptoleniaic astrononay, long since ex- 
ploded. 

1734. Perhaps the villas, kc. : A tasteful writer. IVIrs. Ellis, says that the 
idea of ''descending gods" requiring " villas," or half-way houses to halt at, 
is wholly unworthy of the dignity of the author of " Night Thoughts." 
But she nnistakes the author's idea, which was, that these naight be the tena- 
porary residences of angels in their descent to our earth. The idea of halt- 
ing there related to the poet and not to angels. But what is there unbe- 
conaing the dignity of our poet, in intimating that perhaps the angels occa- 
sionally took up their abode in those magnificent luminaries, the centres of 
planetary systems ? 

1736. The threshold (of the palace) of the Deity : Or the entrance to his 
vast dominions, the far greater part of which lie beyond, and yet unex- 
plored. 

1748. On nature'' s Alps : On nature's highest eminence, &c. 



NIGHT IX. 485 

Of this so foreign, imterrestrial sphere, 

Where mortal, untranslated, never stray 'd? 1*755 

THE INHABITANTS OF OTHER WORLDS INTERROGATED. 

' ye, as distant from my little home, 
As swiftest sun-beams in an age can fly ! 
Far from my native element I roam, 
In quest of new, and wonderful, to man. 

What province this, of His immense domain, 1760 

Whom all obey ? Or mortals here, or gods ? 
Ye bord'rers on the coast of bliss ! what are you ? 
A colony from heav'n ? Or, only raised, 
By frequent visit from heav'n's neighboui'ing realms, 
To secondary gods, and half divine ? — 1*765 

Whate'er your nature, this is past dispute, 
Far other life you live, far other tongue 
You talk, far other thought, perhaps, you think, 
Than man. How various are the works of God ! 
But say. What thought ? Is reason here enthroned, 1*770 
And absolute ? oFsense in arms against her ? 
Have you two hghts ? Or need you no reveal'd ? 
Enjoy your happy realms their golden age ? 

1772, Two lights : Nature and Revelation. 

1773. Golden age : Their primitive condition of felicity. There is an 
allusion to the fancies of the classical poets who divided all ■ history into 
four periods : the first, or golden agc^ when there was an eternal spring, and 
when the earth spontaneously poured forth her harvests, and man 

" yindice nullo 

Sponte sua sine lege Mem rectumque colebat," 

was coeval with the reign of Saturn upon earth. The next, or silver age, 
was marked by the change of seasons, and the division and cultivation of 
lands. The third, or brazen age, is described as 

" S(B^■io^ risreniis, et ad horrida promptior arma ; 
Ijfec sceleratij tamen." 

And then came the last, or iron age, full of all sorts of hardships and 
wickedness, which still continues (Ovidii Metamorp. i. 89, &c.) — Brande. 



486 THE CONSOLATION. 

And had your Eden an abstemious Eve ? 

Our Eve's fair daughters prove their pedigree, 1YY5 

And ask their Adams — ' AVho would not be wise V 

Or, if your mother fell, are you redeem'd ? 

And if redeem'd — is your Redeemer scorn'd ? 

Is this your final residence ? If not, 

Change you your scene, translated ? or by death ? 1780 

And if by death, what death ? — Know you disease ? 

Or horrid war ? — With war, this fatal hour, 

Europa groans (so call we a small field, 

"Where kings run mad.) In our world, death deputes 

Intemperance to do the work of ages ; 1785 

And, hanging up the quiver nature gave him, 

As slow of execution, for despatch 

Sends forth imperial butchers ; bids them slay 

Their sheep (the silly sheep they fleeced before,) 

And toss him twice ten thousand at a meal. 1790 

Sit all your executioners on thrones ? 

With you, can rage for plunder make a god ? 

And bloodshed wash out ev'ry other stain ? 

But you, perhaps, can't bleed : from matter gross 

Your spirits clean, are delicately clad 1795 

In fine-spun ether, privileged to soar. 

Unloaded, uninfected ; how unlike 

The lot of man ! How few of human race 

By their own mud unmurder'd ! How we wage 

Self-war eternal ! — Is your painful day 1800 

1780. Translated : Conveyed or transported, as Enoch was, without suf- 
fering death, Gen. v. 24 ; Heb. xi. 5. 

1783. Europa: Europe. 

1788. Impenal butchers : Such as Alexander, Caesar, Napoleon. 

1792. Make a god: As in the case of Alexander, and others — that is, 
their admirers or flatterers assigned them a place among the gods. 

1796. Ether : Subtle matter, thinner than the atmosphere. 

1799. By their own mud: A disparaging epithet, equivalent to clay, dust, 
and means the same as fellow-creature, all being alike made of the dust of 
the earth. 



NIGHT IX. 487 

Of hardy conflict o'er ? or, are you still -^ 

Raw candidates at school ? And have you those 

Who disaffect reversions, as with us ? — 

But what are we ? You never heard of man ; 

Or earth; the bedlam of the universe ! 180r 

Where reason (andiseased with you) runs mad, 

And nurses Folly's children as her own ; 

Fond of the foulest. In the sacred mount 

Of holiness, where reason is pronounced 

Infallible, and thunders, like a god ; 1810 

E'en there, by saints, the demons are outdone ; 

What these think wrong, our saints refine to right ; 

And kindly teach dull hell her own black arts : 

Satan, instructed, o'er their morals smiles. — 

But this, how strange to you, who know not man ! 1815 

Has the least rumour of our race arrived ? 

Call'd here Elijah, in his flaming car ? jX^ 

Past by you the good Enoch, on his road 

To those fair fields, whence Lucifer was hurl'd ; 

Who brush'd perhaps, your sphere in his descent, 1820 

Stain'd your pure crystal ether, or let fall 

A short echpse from his portentous shade ? 

O, that that fiend had lodged on some broad orb 

Athwart his way ; nor reach'd his present home, 

Then blacken'd earth with footsteps foul'd in hell, 1825 

Nor wash'd in ocean, as from Rome he past 

To Britain's isle ; too, too conspicuous there !' 

1803. Disaffect reversions : Disdain a prospective inheritance, alluding to 
immortality. 

1805. Bedlam : Madhouse, lunatic asylum. 

1808. Sacred Mount, &c. : The Vatican at Rome. 

1811. Saints.' Those who claim to be such. The Jesuits are character- 
ized in this passage with not too great severity. 

1817. Elijah, &c. . 2 Kings ii. 11. 

1818. Enoch, &c.: Gen. v. 24 

1819. Lucifer: Satan. 

1826. Nor washed, &c. : And not washed. 



488 THE CONSOLATION. 



THE QUESTION RESUMED WHERE IS THE CREATOR'S THRONE? 

Buti-his is all digression. Where is He, 
That o'er heav'n's battlements the felon hm-l'd 
To groans, and chains, and darkness? Where is He, 1830 
Who sees creation's summit in a vale ? 
He, whom, while man is man, he can't bnt seek ; 
x\iid if he finds, commences more than man ? 
O for a telescope His throne to reach ! 

Tell me, ye learn'd on earth, or blest above ! 1835 

Ye searching, ye Newtonian angels — tell. 
Where your great Master's orb ? His planets where ? 
Those conscious satellites, those morning stars, 
First-born of Deity ! from central love. 

By veneration most profound, thrown off; 1840 

By sweet attraction, no less strongly drawn, 
Awed, and yet raptured ; raptured, yet serene ; 
Past thought illustrious, but with borrow'd beams ; 
In still approaching circles, still remote, 

Revolving round the sun's eternal Sire ? 1845 

Or sent, in hues direct, on embassies 
To nations — in what latitude ? — Beyond 
Terrestrial thought's horizon ! — And on what 
High errands sent ? — Here human effort ends ; 
And leaves me still a stranger to His throne. 1850 

Full well it might ! I quite mistook my road ; 
Born in an age, more curious than devout ; 
More fond to fix the place of heaven, or hell, 
Than studious this to shun, or that secure. 
'Tis not the curious, but the pious path, 1855 

1832. He can't, &c. : Man can't but seek. 

1838. Morning stars : The holy angels. 

1840-41. Thrown off — drawn: Expressions borrowed from astronomy 
alluding to the centrifugal and centripetal forces which govern the revolu- 
tion of the satellite around its primary. 

1843. Elustrioics : Luminous, bright. 



NIGHT IX. 489 

That leads me to my point : Lorenzo ! know, 

Without or star, or angel, for their guide. 

Who worship God, shall find him. Humble love. 

And not proud reason, keeps the door of heaven ; 

Love finds admission, where proud science fails. 1860 

Man's science is the culture of his heart ; 

And not to lose his plummet in the depths 

Of nature, or the more profound of God. 

Either to know, is an attempt that sets 

The wisest on a level with the fool. 1865 

To fathom nature, (ill attempted here !) 

Past doubt, is deep philosophy above ; 

Higher degrees in bliss archangels take. 

As deeper learn'd ; the deepest, learning still. 

For, what a thunder of Omnipotence 1870 

(So might I dare to speak) is seen in all ! 

In man ! in earth ! in more amazing skies ! 

Teaching this lesson, pride is loth to learn 

'Not deeply to discern, not much to know. 

Mankind was born to wonder, and adore.' 18Y5 

THE RELIGIOUS DEVOTION OF OTHER WORLDS. 

And is there cause for higher wonder still, 
Than that which struck us from our past surveys ? 
Yes ; and for deeper adoration too. 
From my late airy travel unconfined, 

Have I learn'd nothing? — Yes, Lorenzo; this : 1880 

Each of these stars is a religious house ; 
I saw their altars smoke, then* incense rise ; 
And heard hosannas ring through every sphere, 
A seminary fraught with future gods. 

1863. The more prof ound : The deeper depths. 

1870. What a thunder of Omnipotence : What an impressive demonstra- 
tion of Omnipotence, thunder (with lightning) being one of the most 
impressive manifestations of power. 

1884. Future gods: Future beings of a superhuman order, and of an ex- 
21^ 



490 THE COXSOLATION. 

Nature, all o'er, is consecrated gTound, 1885 

Teeming with growths immortal, and di\aae. 

The great ProjDrietor's all-bounteous hand 

Leaves nothing waste ; but sows these fiery fields 

With seeds of reason, wiiich to virtues rise 

Beneath his genial ray ; and, if escaped 1890 

The pestilential blasts of stubborn will, 

When grown mature, are gather'd for the sides. 

And is devotion thought too much on earth, 

When beings, so superior, homage boast, 

And triumph in prostrations to the Throne ? 1895 

REVIEW OF THE KOCTURXAL LANDSCAPE. 

But wherefore more of planets, or of stars ? 
Ethereal journeys, and, discover'd there, 
Ten thousand worlds, ten thousand ways devout. 
All nature sending incense to the Throne, 
Except the bold Lorenzos of om* sphere ? 1900 

Opening the solemn sources of my soul. 
Since I have pour'd, like feigu'd Eridanus, 
My flowing numbers o'er the flaming skies, 
ISTor see, of fancy, or of fact, what more 

In\'ites the muse here turn we, and re\dew 1905 

Our past nocturnal landscape wide : — then say, 

Say, then, Loi-enzo ! with what burst of heart, 

The whole, at once, revolving in his thought, 

MiLst man exclaim, adoiing, and aghast ? 

* O what a root! O vrhat a branch, is here ! 1910 

O what a Father ! what a family ! 

Worlds ! systems ! and creations ! — and creations, 

In one ao-o-lomerated cluster, hung. 

alted moral character: the term gods being used very frequently by our 
author in this secondary and moderate sense. 

1902. Feign'd Eridanus: This is the Greek name of the river Po in 
Italy, and the name of a winding constellation in the southern hemisphere. 



NIGHT IX. 491 

Great Vine ! on Thee, on Thee the chister hangs ; 

The fihal chister ! infinitely spread- 1915 

In glowing globes, with various being fraught ; 

And di'inks (nectareous draught !) immortal life. 

Or, shall I say, (for who can say enough ?) 

A constellation of ten thousand gems, 

(And, ! of what dimensions ! of what weight !) 1920 

Set in one signet, flames on the right hand 

Of Majesty Divine ! the blazing seal, 

That deeply stamps, on all-created mind, 

Indehble, his sovereign attributes, 

Omnipotence, and love ! that, passing bound ; 1925 

And this, surpassing that. ISTor stop we here, 

For w^ant of power in God, but thought in man. 

E'en this acknowledged, leaves us still in debt : 

If greater aught, that greater all is thine. 

Dread Sire I — Accept this miniature of Thee; 1930 

And pardon an attempt from mortal thought, 

In which archangels might have fail'd, unblamed.' 

How such ideas of th' Almighty's power, 
And such ideas of the Almighty's plan, 

(Ideas not absurd,) distend the thought 1935 

Of feeble mortals ! Nor of them alone ! 
The fulness of the Deity breaks forth 
In inconceivables to men, and gods. 

1914. Great Vine: Jesus Christ. John xv. 1, 

1915. The filial cluster : The cluster of sons — the collection of similar and 
harmonious worlds. The word cluster is used in correspondence with the 
figure of the vine on which they hang. 

1919. Gems: The figure from a cluster hanging on a vine, is here 
changed to numberless gems glittering in the signet ring which adorns the 
right hand of Majesty Divine. An allusion is here made.-perhaps, to the 
seal used by the king or queen of England in sealing private letters or grants 
in accordance with parliamentary bills. 

The seal, in the text, is very properly represented as marked with the 
attributes of Omnipotence and Love. 

1938. Incfynceivables : Things inconceivable. 



492 THE CONSOLATION. 

Think, then, think ! nor ever drop the thought ; 

How low must man descend, when gods adore ! 1940 

Have I not, then, accomphsh'd my prond boast ? 

Did I not tell thee, ' We v/oiild mount, Lorenzo ! 

And kindle our devotion at the stars ?' 

And have I fail'd ? and did I flatter thee « 
And art all adamant ? And dost confute 1945 

All urged, with one irrefragable smile ? 
Lorenzo ! mirth how miserable here ? 
Swear by the stars, by Him who made them, swear. 
Thy heart, henceforth, shall be as pure as they : 
Then thou, like them, shalt shine ; hke them, shalt rise 1950 
From, low to lofty ; from obscure to bright ; 
By due gradation, nature's sacred law. 
The stars, from whence ? — Ask Chaos — he can tell. 
These bright temptations to idolatry, 

From darkness, and confusion, took their birth ; 1955 

Sons of deformity ! from fluid dregs 
Tartarean, first they rose to masses rude ; 
And then, to spheres opaque ; then dimly shone ; 
Then brighten'd ; then blazed out in perfect day. 

1945. And art (thou) , &c. And dost (thou) confute. 
1956-57. From fluid dregs Tartarean : Our author here obviously bor- 
rows from Milton, as in a former instance cited : 

Darkness profound 
Cover'd th' abyss ; but on the waf ry calm 
His brooding wings the Spirit of God outspread, 
And vital virtue infused, and vital warmth 
Throughout the fluid mass, but downward purged 
The black Tartareous cold infernal dregs 
Adverse to life : then founded, then conglobed 
Like things to like, the rest to sev'ral place 
Disparted, &Q,.— Paradise Lost, Book VII., 233—241. 

So, in describing a subsequent process of the creation, the poet says . 
For, of celestial bodies, first the smi, 
A mighty sphere, he framed, nnlightsome fii-st, 
Though of ethereal mould : then form'd the moon 
Globose, and ev'ry magnitude of stars, 
And sow'd with stars the ITeav"n thick as a field : 
Of light, &c.— Paradise Lost, Boole VIL, 354—859. 



NIGHT IX. 493 

Nature delights in progress ; in advance 19G0 

From worse to better : but, when minds ascend, 

Progress, in part, depends upon themselves. 

Heaven aids exertion ; greater makes the great ; 

The voluntary httle lessens more. 

O be a man ! and thou shalt be a god ! 1965 

A.nd half self-made ! — Ambition how divine ! 

ADDRESS TO THE UNDEVOUT. 

O thou, ambitious of disgrace alone ! 
Still undevout ? unkindled ? — Though high taught, 
School'd by the skies, and pupil of the stars ; 
Rank coward to the fashionable world ! 1970 

Art thou ashamed to bend thy knee to Heaven ? 
Cursed fume of pride, exhaled from deepest hell ! 
Pride in religion, is man's highest praise. 
Bent on destruction ! and in love with death ! 
Not all these luminaries, quench'd at once, 1975 

Were half so sad, as one benighted mind, 
Which gropes for happiness, and meets despair. 
How, like a widow in her weeds, the Night, 
Amid her ghmmering tapers, silent sits ! 
How sorrowful, how desolate, she weeps 1980 

Perpetual dews, and saddens nature's scene ! 
A scene more sad sin makes the darken'd soul, 
All comfort kills, nor leaves one spark alive. 

1963-64. Greater (exertion) makes the great {or great minds). The volun- 
tary little (exertion) lessens more : Tends more to contract the mind than 
great exertions tend to enlarge it. 

1973. Pride in religion is, &c. : Our author does not mean to say that 
religious pride is praiseworthy, but that a great and unconcealed delight in 
the duties of religion is the highest praise of man. 

1974. Love death : Borrowed from Proverbs viii. 36, " He that sinneth 
against me (v.'isdom, or true religion), wrongeth his own soul : all they 
that hate me love death." 

1978. Like a widow, &c. : What a beautifully touching comparison have 
we here ! 



494 THE CONSOLATION. 



"VYHAT THE GRANDEUR OF THE UNIVERSE TEACHES. 

Though blind of heart, still open is thine eye : 
Why such magnificence in all thou seest ? 1985 

Of matter's grandeur, know, one end is this, 
To tell the rational, who gazes on it — 
' Though that immensely great, still greater he, 
Whose breast capacious, can embrace, and lodge, 
Unburden'd, nature's universal scheme; 1990 

Can grasp creation with a single thought ; 
Creation grasp ; and not exclude its Sire' — 
To tell him farther — ' It behoves him much 
To guard th' important, yet depending, fate 
Of being, brighter than a thousand suns : 1995 

One single ray of thought outshines them all.' 
And if man hears obedient, soon he'll soar 
Superior heights, and on his purple wing, 
His purple wing bedropp'd with eyes of gold. 
Rising, where thought is now denied to rise, 2000 

Look down triumphant on these dazzhng spheres. 

Why then persist ? — No mortal ever hved. 
But dying, he pronounced (when words are true) 
The whole that charms thee, absolutely vain ; 
Vain, and far worse ! — Think thou, with dying men ; 2005 
condescend to think as angels think ! 
O tolerate a chance for happiness ! 
Our nature such, ill choice ensures ill fate ; 
And hell had been, though there had been no God. 
Dost thou not know, my new astronomer ! 2010 

Earth, turning from the sun, brings night to man ? 
Man, turning from his God, brings endless night. 
Where thou canst read no morals, find no friend, 

1988, He : That is, man. 

1 994-95. Fate of being : Destined condition or state of existence. 
2011. The author, in the next line, makes an admirable use of this cir- 
cumstance 



NIGHT IX. 495 

Amend no manners, and expect no peace. 

How deep the darkness ! and tlie groan, how loud! 2015 

And far, how far, from lambent are the flames ! — 

Such is Lorenzo's purchase ! such his praise ! 

The proud, the politic Lorenzo's praise ! 

Though in his ear, and levell'd at his heart, 

I've half read o'er the volume of the skies. 2020 

THE VOICE OF NATURE. 

For think not thou hast heard all this from me ; 
My song but echoes what great nature speaks. 
What has she spoken ? Thus the goddess spoke, 
Thus speaks for ever : — ' Place at nature's head, 
A Sovereign, which o'er all things rolls his eye, 2025 

Extends his wing, promulgates his commands, 
But, above all, diffuses endless good : 
To whom, for sure redress, the wrong'd may fly ; 
The vile, for mercy ; and the pain'd, for peace : 
By whom, the various tenants of these spheres, 2030 

Diversified in fortunes, place, and powers, 
Raised in enjoyment, as in worth they rise, 
Arrive at length (if worthy such approach) 
At that bless'd fountain-head, from which they stream ; 
Where conflict past redoubles present joy ; 2035 

And present joy looks forward on increase ; 
And that, on more ; no period ! every step 
A double boon ! a promise, and a bliss.' 
How easy sits this scheme on human hearts . 
It suits their make ; it sooths their vast desires ; 2040 

Passion is pleased, and reason asks no more ; 
'Tis rational ! 'tis great ! — But what is thine ? 
It darkens ! shocks ! excruciates ! and confounds ! 
Leaves us quite naked, both of help, and hope. 
Sinking from bad to worse ; few years, the sport 2045 

Of fortune ; then, the morsel of despair. 

2016. Lambent: Playful, harmless. 



496 THE CONSOLATION. 



THE FOLLY OF VICE AND IRRELIGION. 

Say, then, Lorenzo, (for thou kuow'st it well,) 
What's vice ? — Mere want of compass in our thought. 
Rehgion, what ? — The proof of common sense. 
How art thou hooted, where the least prevails ! 2050 

Is it my fault, if these truths call thee fool ? 
And thou shalt never be miscall'd by me. 
Can neither shame, nor terror, stand thy friend ? 
And art thou still an insect in the mire ? 
How, Hke thy guardian angel, have I flown ; 2055 

Snatch'd thee from earth ; escorted thee through all 
Th' ethereal armies ; walk'd thee, hke a god, 
Through splendours of first magnitude, arranged 
On either hand ; clouds thrown beneath thy feet ; 
Close cruised on the bright paradise of God ; 2060 

And almost introduced thee to the Throne ! 
And art thou still carousing, for dehght. 
Rank poison ; first, fermenting to mere froth, 
And then subsiding into final gall ? 

To beings of sublime, immortal make, 2065 

How shocking is all joy, whose end is sure ! 
Such joy, more shocking still, the more it charms ! 
And dost thou choose what ends, ere well begun ; 
And infamous, as short ? And dost thou choose 
(Thou, to whose palate glory is so sweet) 2070 

To wade into perdition, through contempt, 
Not of poor bigots only, but thy own ? 
For I have peep'd into thy cover'd heart, 
And seen it blush beneath a boastful brow ; 
For, by strong guilt's most violent assault, 20*75 

Conscience is but disabled, not destroy'd. 

O thou most awful being, and most vain ! 
Thy will, how frail ! how glorious is thy power ! 

2077. Most aivful being: Man is so from the power which he possesses 
(2078-81). 



NIGHT IX. 497 

Though dread eternity has sown her seeds 

Of bhss, and wo, in thy despotic breast ; 2080 

Though heaven, and hell, depend upon thy choice ; 

A butterfly comes 'cross, and both are fled. 

Is this the picture of a rational ? 

This horrid image, shall it be most just ? 

Lorenzo ! no : it cannot — shall not, be, 2085 

If there is force in reason ; or, in sounds, 

Chanted beneath the glimpses of the moon, 

A magic, at this planetary hour, 

When slumber locks the general lip, and dreams 

Through senseless mazes hunt souls uninspired. 2090 

Attend — the sacred mysteries begin 

My solemn night-born adjuration hear ; 
Hear, and I'll raise thy spirit from the dust ; 
While the stars gaze on this enchantment new ; 
Enchantment, not infernal, but divine ! 2095 

SOLEMN NIGHT-BORN ADJURATION. 

* By Silence, death's pecuhar attribute ; 
By Darkness, guilt's inevitable doom ; 
By Darkness, and by Silence, sisters dread ! 
That draw the curtain round night's ebon throne, 
And raise ideas, solemn as the scene ! 2100 

By Night, and all of av/ful, night presents 
To thought, or sense, (of awful much, to both, 
The goddess brings 1) By these her trembhng fires, 
Like Vesta's, ever burning ; and, like hers, 

2088. A magic : A mysterious process for producing extraordinary effects. 

2092. Mjuration : Solemn appeal, by whick one person lays upon another 
an obligation to speak or act in a certain manner, as if under the solemnity 
of an oath. 

2095. F/iichantment : A secret process, in which certain agents, real or 
imaginary, are invoked for producing singular results. 

2103. Fires: The stars. 

2104. Like Vesta's: She was the Pagan deity that presided over the do- 



408 THE CONSOLATION. 

Sacred to thouglits immaculate, and pure ! 2105 

By these bright orators, that prove, and praise, 

And press thee to revere, the Deity ; 

Perhaps, too, aid thee, when revered a wliile, 

To reach his throne ; as stages of the soul. 

Through which, at different periods, she shall pass, 2110 

Refining gradual, for her final height, 

And purging off some dross at every sphere ! 

By this dark pall thrown o'er the silent world ! 

By the world's kings, and kingdoms, most renown'd, 

From short ambition's zenith set for ever; 2115 

Sad presage to vain boasters, now in bloom ! 

By the long list of swift mortality, 

From Adam downward to this evening knell, 

Which midnight waves in fancy's startled eye ; 

And shocks her with a hundred centuries, 2120 

Round death's black banner throng'd, in human thought ! 

By thousands, now, resigning their last breath, 

And calling thee — wert thou so wise to heai' ! 

By tombs o'er tombs arising ; human earth 

Ejected, to make room for — human earth ; 2125 

The monarch's terror ! and the sexton's trade ! 

By pompous obsequies, that shun the day, 

The torch funereal, and the nodding plume. 

Which makes poor man's humihation proud ; 

Boast of our ruin ! triumph of our dust ! 2130 

By the damp vault that weeps o'er royal bones ; 

And the pale lamp, that shews the ghastly dead, 

More ghastly through the thick incumbent gloom ! 

By visits (if there are) from darker scenes. 

The ghding spectre ! and the groaning grave ! 2135 

By groans, and graves, and miseries that groan 

mestic hearth, or the social interests of the family. Jn her temple at Rome 
was a sacred fire, attended by six virgins, called Vestals, who were specially 
charged, under severe penalties to preserve the sacred flame from going out. 
In case of its going out through their neglect, it was rekindled from the 
rays of the sun. 



NIGHT IX. 499 

For the grave's shelter ! By desponding men, 

Senseless to pains of death, from pangs of guilt ! 

By guilt's last audit ! By yon moon in blood, 

The rocking firmament, the falhng stars, 2140 

And thunder's last discharge, great nature's knell ! 

By second chaos ; and eternal night' — 

Be wise — ISTor let Philander blame my charm ; 

But own not ill discharged my double debt, 

Love to the hving, duty to the dead. 2145 

For know, I'm but executor ; he left 
This moral legacy ; I make it o'er 
By his command : Philander hear in me. 
And Heaven in both. — If deaf to these, oh ! hear 
Florello's tender voice : his weal depends 2150 

On thy resolve ; it trembles at thy choice : 
For his sake — love thyself. Example strikes 
All human hearts ! a bad example more ; 
More still a father's ; that ensures his ruin. 
As parent of his being, wouldst thou prove 2155 

Th' unnatural parent of his miseries, 
And make him curse the being which thou gavest ? 
Is this the blessing of so fond a father ? 
If careless of Lorenzo, spare, oh ! spare, 

Florello's father, and Philander's friend ! 2160 

Florello's father ruin'd, ruins him ; 
And from Philander's friend the world expects 
A conduct, no dishonour to the dead. 
Let passion do, w^hat nobler m.otives should ; 
Let love, and emulation, rise in aid 21G5 

To reason ; and persuade thee to be — bless'd. 

This seems not a request to be denied ; 

2139. Last audit Last examination or reckoning in regard to tlie cha- 
racter and conduct of one's past life. 

2143. Philander: See Night I. 383-6; 434-7. 

2150. Florello's tender voice: He was the young son of Lorenzo (2154-60) 

2164. Passion: Love, ardent and impulsive. 



500 THE CONSOLATION. 

Yet (sucli th' infatuation of mankind !) 

'Tis the most hopeless, man can make to man. 

Shall I, then, rise in argument, and warmth ; 2170 

And urge Philander's posthumous advice, 

From topics yet unbroach'd ? 

But, oh ! I faint ! my spirits fail ! — ^Kor strange ! 

So long on wing, and in no middle clime ! 

To which my gi-eat Creator's glory call'd : 2175 

And calls — but, now, in vain. Sleep's dewy wand 

Has stroked my drooping hds, and promises 

My long arrear of rest ; the downy god 

(Wont to return with our returning peace) 

Will pay, ere long, and bless me with repose. 2180 

Haste, haste, sweet stranger ! from the peasant's cot, 

The ship-boy's hammock, or the soldier's straw, 

Whence sorrow never chased thee : with thee bring, 

!N'ot hideous visions, as of late ; but draughts 

Dehcious of well-tasted, cordial, rest ; 2185 

Man's rich restorative ; his balmy bath, 

That supples, lubricates, and keeps in play. 

The various movements of this nice machine, 

Which asks such frequent periods of repau*. 

When tired with vain rotations of the day, 2190 

Sleep winds us up for the succeeding dawn ; 

Fresh we spin on, till sickness clogs our wheels, 

Or death quite breaks the spring, and motion ends. 

When will it end with me ? 

2174. In no middle clime : So Milton characterizes his own song: 

That with no middle flight intends to soar 
Above the Aonian mount, while it pursues 
Things unattempted yet in prose or rhyme. 

2176. Wand: An allusion to the rod used by jugglers and fortune-tellers 
in performing their achievements. Sleep is personified as the " drowsy god" 
— the god of sweet repose. 

2188. Nice machine: The body is here compared to a clock or watch, 
which statement will explain many terms used in the following lines- 



NIGHT IX. 601 

f AN ADDRESS TO THE DEITY. 

' Thou only know'st, 2195 



Thou, whose broad eye the futm-e, and the past, 

Joins to the present ; making one of three 

To mortal thought ! Thou know'st, and Thou alone, 

All-knowing ! — all unknown ! — and yet well known ! 

Near, though remote ! and, though unfathora'd, felt ! 2200 

And, though invisible, for ever seen ! 

And seen in all ! the great, and the minute : 

Each globe above, with its gigantic race. 

Each flower, each leaf, with its small people swarm'd, 

(Those puny vouchers of Omnipotence !) 2205 

To the first thought, that asks, ' From whence ?' declare 

Their common Source. Thou Fountain, running o'er 

In rivers of communicated joy ! 

Who gavest us speech for far, far humbler themes ! 

Say, by what name shall I presume to call 2210 

Him I see burning in these countless suns. 

As Moses, in the bush ? Illustrious Mind ! 

The whole creation, less, far less, to Thee, 

Than that to the creation's ample round. 

How shall I name Thee ? — How my labouring soul 2215 

Heaves underneath the thought, too big for birth ! 

' Great System of perfections ! Mighty Cause 
Of causes mighty ! Cause uncaused ! Sole Root 
Of nature, that luxuriant growth of God ! 
First Father of effects ! that progeny 2220 

Of endless series ; where the golden chain's 

2199-2201. Some striking contrasts w^ill here be noticed and adnnired. 
The description of the Godhead that follows is uncommonly subhrae and 
awe-inspiring, altogether worthy of the sanctified genius of the poet. 

2203. Gigantic race : Its large and heavy satellites — its planets or moons. 

2212. In the busk: See Exod. iii. 2. Mind: Jehovah. 

2214. Ample round: The boundless space that stretches on every hand 
beyond the limits of creation. 



502 THE CONSOI.ATIOlsr. 

Last link admits a period, who can tell ? 

Father of all that is or heard, or hears ! % 

Father of all that is or seen, oi' sees ! 

Father of all that is, or shall arise ! 2225 

Father of this immeasm-able mass 

Of matter multiform ; or dense, or rare ; 

Opaque, or lucid ; rapid, or at rest ; 

Minute, or passing bound ! in each extreme, 

Of hke amaze, and mystery, to man. 2230 

Father of these bright milhons of the night ! 

Of which the least, full Godhead had proelaim'd, 

A.nd thrown the gazer on his knee — Or, say, 

Is appellation higher still. Thy choice ? 

Father of matter's temporary lords ! 2235 

Father of spirits ! nobler offspring ! sparks 

Of high paternal glory ; rich endowed 

With various measures, and with various modes 

Of instinct, reason, intuition ; beams 

More pale, or bright from day divine, to break 2240 

The dark of matter organized (the ware 

Of all created spirit ;) beams, that rise 

Each over other in superior light, 

TiU the last ripens into lustre strong, 

Of next approach to Godhead. Father fond 2245 

(Far fonder than e'er bore that name on earth) 

Of intellectual beings 1 beings bless'd 

With powers to please Thee ; not of passive ply 

To laws they know not ; beings lodged in seats 

Of well-adapted joys, in different domes 2250 

Of this imperial palace for thy sons ; 

2222. Period: Termination. 

2223-24. Or heard : Either heard. Or seen : Either seen. 
2230. Amaze: Amazement. 

2241. The ivare, &c. : The material upon which created spirit operates, oi 
the instrument it employs. 

2248, Ply : Inclination or bias. 



NIGHT IX. 



503 



Of this proud, populous, well-policied, 

Thougli boundless habitation, plann'd by Thee : 

Whose several clans their several climates suit ; 

And transposition, doubtless, would destroy. 2255 

Or, oh ! indulge, immortal King ! indulge 

A title, less august, indeed, but more 

Endearing ; ah ! how sweet in human ears ! 

Sweet in our ears, and triumph in our hearts ! 

Father of immortality to man! 2260 

A theme that lately set my soul on fire. — 

And Thou the next ! yet equal ! Thou, by whom 

That blessing was convey'd ; far more ! was bought ; 

Ineffable the price ! by whom all worlds 

Were made ; and one redeem'd ! illustrious Light 22G5 

From Light illustrious ! Thou, whose regal power, 

Finite in time, but infinite in space. 

On more than adamantine basis fix'd, 

O'er more, far more, than diadems, and thrones, 

Inviolably reigns ; the dread of gods ! 2270 

And, oh ! the friend of man ! beneath whose foot, 

And by the mandate of whose awful nod, 

All regions, revolutions, fortunes, fates. 

Of high, of low, of mind, and matter, roll 

Through the short channels of expiring time, 2275 

Or shoreless ocean of eternity. 

Calm or tempestuous (as thy Spirit breathes,) 

In absolute subjection ! — And, O Thou 

The glorious Third ! distinct, not separate ! 

Beaming from both ! with both incorporate; 2280 

And (strange to tell !) incorporate with dust ! 

By condescension, as thy glory, great, 

2252. Well-policied : Well-regulated. 

2261. That lately, &c. Nights VI. and VIL 

2262. TJiou : The Son of God, the Second Person in the holy Trinity. 
2279. The glorious Third 'Person in the Trinity — the Holy Spirit. 



604 THE CONSOLATION. 

Enshrined in man ! of human hearts, if pui'e, 

Divine inhabitant ; the tie divine 

Of heaven with distant earth ! by whom, I trust, ' 2285 

(If not inspii'ed) uncensm'ed this address 

To Thee, to Them — To whom ? — ^I^Iysterious Power ; 

Reveal'd — yet unreveal'd ! darkness in Hght ! 

Number in unity ! our joy ! our di-ead ! 

The triple bolt that lays all wrong in ruin ! 2290 

That animates all right, the triple sun ! 

Sun of the soul ! her never-setting sun ! 

Triune, unutterable, imconceived. 

Absconding, yet demonsti-able. Great God ! 

Greater than greatest ! better than the best ! 2295 

Kinder than kindest ! with soft pity's eye, 

Or (stronger still to speak it) with thine own, 

From thy bright home, from that high firmament, 

Where Thou, from all eternity, hast dwelt; 

Beyond archangels' unassisted ken ; 2300 

From far above what mortals highest call ; 

From elevation's pinnacle ; look down. 

Through — what ? confounding interval ! through all, 

And more than labouring fancy can conceive ; 

Through radiant ranks of essences unknown ; 2305 

Through hierarchies from hierarchies detach'd 

Round various banners of Omnipotence, 

With endless change of raptui'ous duties fired : 

Through wondi'ous beings' interposing swarms. 

All clustering at the call, to dwell in Thee ; 2310 

2283. Enshrined: The Scriptures speak of man as the temple of the 
Holy Ghost. He is said to dwell in the humble and contrite heart of man. 
2286. If not, &c. : Though not, &c. 

2288. UnreveaPd : Not fully comprehended. 

2289. Number in unity : Three in one — three Persons (or distinctions) in 
one Godhead. 

2294. Absconding : Withdrawing from open or distinct view. 
2300. Ken : Reach of sight. 



NIGHT IX. 505 

Through this wide waste of worlds ! this vista vast, 

All sanded o'er with suns ; suns turn'd to night 

Before thy feeblest beam — Look down — down — down, 

On a poor breathing particle in dust, 

Or, lower, — an immortal in his crimes. 2315 

His crimes forgive ! forgive his virtues, too ! 

Those smaller faults, half converts to the right ; 

Nor let me close these eyes, which never more 

May see the sun (though night's descending scale 

Now weighs up morn,) unpitied, and unbless'd! 2320 

In Thy displeasure dwells eternal pain ; 

Pain, om' aversion ; pain, which strikes me now : 

And, since all pain is terrible to man. 

Though transient, terrible ; at Thy good hour, 

Gently, ah gently, lay me in my bed, 2325 

My clay-cold bed ! by nature, now, so near ; 

By nature, near ; still nearer by disease ! 

2312. All sanded o'er loith stms : A wonderfully sublime conception. 
Suns, which are globes larger than we can conceive of, are here compared to 
grains of sand, to indicate their insignificance contrasted with the majesty 
and power of their Great Author, and in the next place to denote their 
countless multitude. 

The next idea, which relates to their luminous splendour, is equally sub- 
lime. It is lost, and turned to nighty when brought into the presence of the 
feeblest beam of the light of the universe. There is great eloquence, more- 
over, in the repetition of the word down- 

2316. Forgive his virtues : Even these require forgiveness, because, being 
imperfect, they are so far criminal. They are only half converts to the right, 
half conformed to the Divine rule of rectitude. 

2319. Night^s descending scale^ &c, : Night and Day are here poetically 
represented as the scales of a balance, or as occupying them ; accordingly, 
as one descends the other rises, and the reverse. The author for this fine 
figure was probably indebted to Milton : 

for the Sun, 

Dedined, was hasting now with prone career 
To th' ocean isles, and in th' ascending scale 
Of Heav'n the stars that usher evening rose. 

ParaMse Lost, Book IVl, 352—4. 

2326. By nature : According to the common course of events. 
22 



506 THE CONSOLATION. 

Till then, be this, an emblem of my grave : 

Let it out-preach the preacher ; every night 

Let it outcry the boy at Philip's ear ; 2330 

That tongue of death ! that herald of the tomb ! 

And when (the shelter of thy wing implored) 

My senses, soothed, shall sink in soft repose ; 

O sink this truth still deeper in mj soul, 

Suggested by my pillow, sign'd by fate, 2335 

Fust, in fate's volume, at the page of man — 

Man's sickly soul, though turri'd and toss'' d for ever, 

From side to side, can rest on nought hut Thee ; 

Here, in full trust ; hereafter, in full joy ^ 

On Thee, the promised, sure, eternal down 2340 

Of spirits, toil'd in travel through this vale. 

Nor of that pillow shall my soul despond ; 

For — Love almighty ! Love almighty ! (sing. 

Exult, creation !) Love almighty reigns ! 

That death of death ! that cordial of despair ! 2345 

And loud eternity's triumphant song ! 

' Of whom, no more : — For, thou Patron-God ! 
Thou God and mortal ! thence more God to man .' 
Man's theme eternal ! man's eternal theme I 
Thou canst not 'scape uninjured fi-om our praise. 2350 

Uninjured from our praise can He escape. 
Who, disembosom'd from the Father, bows 
The heaven of heavens, to kiss the distant earth ! 
Breathes out in agonies a sinless soul ! 

Against the cross, death's iron sceptre breaks ! 2355 

From famish'd ruin plucks her human prey ! 

2328. Tkis : Painful disease (2322). 

2330. Philip, king of Macedon, being flushed with his great military- 
success, and in danger of mistaking himself for a god, employed a boy to 
say to him each day, " Thou art a man." 

2332. Th]} iving : The wing of the god Sleep. 

2341. To0d: Fatigued. 

2347. Pation-God : Jesus Christ v/ho it our udoocais and intercessor. 



NIGHT IX. • 507 

Throws wide the gates celestial to his foes ! 

Theii' gratitude, for such a boundless debt, 

Deputes their suffering brothers to receive ! 

And, if deep human guilt in payment fails; ' 2360 

As deeper guilt, prohibits our despair ! 

Enjoins it, as our duty, to rejoice ! 

And, (to close all) omnipotently kind, 

Takes his delights among the sons of men.' 2364 

What words are these ! — And did they come from heaven ? 
And were they spoke to man ? to guilty man ? 
What are all mysteries to love like this ! 
The song of angels, all the melodies 
Of choral gods, are wafted in the sound ; 
Heal and exhilarate the broken heart : 23*70 

lliough plunged, before, in horrors dark as night : 
Rich prelibation of consummate joy I 
Nor wait we dissolution to be bless'd. 

This final effort of the moral muse, 
How justly titled ! jN'or for me alone : 2375 

For all that read ; what spirit of support, 
What heights of consolation, crown my song ! 

FAREWELL TO NIGHT. 

Then, farewell Night ! Of darkness, now, no more l 
Joy breaks, shines, triumphs ; 'tis eternal day. 
Shall that which rises out of nought complain 2380 

Of a few evils, paid with endless joys ? 
My soul ! henceforth, in sweetest union join 
The two supports of human happiness, 

235S-9. Their gratitude^ &c. Deputes, or authorizes, their suffering bro- 
thers (or fellow men) to receive from them offices of kindness, as an expres- 
sion of their gratitude to Him/or such a boundless debt. Matt, xxv. 40. 

2363. See Proverbs viii. 31. 

2369. Choral gods : Gods singing in concert. 

2372. Prclibaiion: Foretaste. 

2375. Titled: "The Consolation." 



608 THE CONSOLATION. 

Which some, erroneous, think can never meet ; 
True taste of hfe, and constant thought of death; 2385 

• The thought of death, sole victor of its dread ! 
Hope, be thy joy ; and probity, thy skill ; 
Thy patron, He, whose diadem has dropp'd 
Yon gems of heaven ; eternity, thy prize : 
And leave the racers of the world their own, 2390 

Their feather, and their froth, for endless toils : 
They part with all for that which is not bread ; 
They mortify, they starve, on wealth, fame, power ; 
And laugh to scorn the fools that aim at more. 
How must a spirit, late escaped from earth, 2396 

Suppose Philander's, Lucia's, or Narcissa's, 
The truth of things new blazing in its eye, 
Look back, astonish'd, on the ways of men, 
Whose hves' whole drift is to forget their graves ! 
And when our present privilege is past, 2400 

To scourge us with due sense of its abuse, 
The same astonishment will seize us all. 
What then must pain us, would preserve us now. 
Lorenzo ! 'tis not yet too late : Lorenzo ! 
Seize wisdom, ere 'tis torment to be wise ; 2405 

That is, seize wisdom, ere she seizes thee, 
For what, my small philosopher ! is hell ? 
Tis nothing, but full knowledge of the truth. 
When truth, resisted long, is sworn our foe, 
And calls eternity to do her right. 2410 

Thus, darkness aiding intellectual light. 
And sacred silence whispering truths divine, 
And truths divine converting pain to peace. 
My song the midnight raven has outwing'd, 
And shot, ambitious of unbounded scenes, 2415 

Beyond the flaming hmits of the world, 
Her gloomy flight. But what avails the flight 

2391. Their feather : Their paltry badges of honor. Their froth : Their 
empty pleasures, or their excitement in the race. 

2392. See Isaiah Iv. 2. , 



NIGHT IX. 509 

Of fancy, wlieii our hearts remain below ? 

Virtue abounds in flatterers, and foes : 

Tis pride, to praise her ; penance, to perform. 2420 

To more than words, to more than worth of tongue, 

Lorenzo ! rise, at this auspicious hour ; 

An hour, when Heaven's most intimate with man ; 

When, hke a falHng star, the ray divine 

Ghdes swift into the bosom of the just ; 2425 

And just are all, determined to reclaim ; 

Which sets that title high, within thy reach. 

Awake, then ; thy Philander calls : awake ! 

Thou, who shalt wake, when the creation sleeps ; 

When, hke a taper, all these suns expu*e; 2430 

When Time, like him of Gaza in his wrath, 

Plucking the pillai-s that support the world. 

In Nature's ample ruins lies entomb'd ; 

And Midnight, universal Midnight ! reigns. 

2421. Worth of tongue : Excellence of speech. 

2431. Him of Gaza: Samson. See Judges xvi. 29i, 30. 



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